On Wednesday, Republican Jefferson Griffin conceded the North Carolina Supreme Court race to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs. This marks the end of the last unresolved contest from the 2024 election, which had been dragged out for months due to numerous lawsuits.
The announcement came two days after a federal judge ruled against Griffin’s legal challenge to tens of thousands of ballots and ordered the North Carolina State Board of Elections to certify Riggs’ victory by 734 votes.
U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, issued a ruling that effectively ended all ongoing litigation and gave Griffin seven days to appeal. Griffin chose to end his legal efforts six months after the November election’s final votes were cast.
“While I do not entirely agree with the District Court’s analysis, I respect the court’s decision — as I have with every judicial tribunal that has heard this case,” Griffin said in a statement Wednesday morning. “I will not appeal the court’s decision.”
Riggs made the following statement: “After millions of dollars spent, more than 68,000 voters at risk of losing their votes, thousands of volunteers mobilized, hundreds of legal documents filed, and immeasurable damage done to our democracy, I’m glad the will of the voters was finally heard, six months and two days after Election Day.”
Riggs, who was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 2023, narrowly won the election over Griffin, a state appeals court judge.
A full machine recount and a partial hand recount both revealed that Riggs led Griffin by 734 votes out of 5.5 million ballots cast.
Griffin, backed by the North Carolina Republican Party, filed hundreds of legal challenges in all 100 counties, alleging that over 65,000 people voted illegally.
These claims targeted three types of voters: those who Griffin’s lawyers claimed did not have driver’s licenses or Social Security numbers on file in their registration records, overseas voters who had never lived in North Carolina, and overseas voters who failed to provide photo identification with their ballots.
Those challenges remained pending in both federal and state courts, including the North Carolina Supreme Court, as a series of nuanced rulings examined specific and complex elements of Griffin’s allegations. Griffin and Riggs recused themselves from the case when it came before the courts they serve on.
The most recent, and now final, ruling came Monday when Myers, the federal judge, ruled that the remaining disputed ballots in the contest must be included in the final tally, effectively confirming Riggs’ victory.
Myers wrote that it would be unconstitutional to throw out tens of thousands of ballots that Griffin claimed were invalid months after they were cast.
“You set the rules before the game. “You don’t change them after the game is over,” Myers stated in his 68-page order.
Riggs’ victory will keep the current 5-2 split on the state Supreme Court, where Republicans hold the majority.
Myers’ decision followed a contentious decision by the North Carolina Supreme Court, which allowed election officials to proceed with a period for thousands of military and overseas voters to “cure” their ballots. Myers had previously blocked that order to allow himself time to review the larger case.
According to a state Supreme Court decision, approximately 60,000 votes cannot be thrown out, but others may be if minor errors are not corrected. In such cases, voters must prove their eligibility to election officials. Even the invalidation of a small number of those ballots could have influenced the election outcome.
The saga raised concerns about the legality of tossing ballots after voters had cast them. Critics of Griffin feared this could happen again in future attempts to overturn close races.
Those critics pointed out that Griffin’s arguments contradicted several long-held precedents in election law, including the idea that election rules must be established before voting begins.
“This is a righteous victory for democracy and a clear defeat of political gamesmanship,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement after Griffin’s concession. “For 200 days, Republicans in North Carolina sought to overturn the will of the people, hijack a state Supreme Court seat, and systematically undermine basic faith in our elections.”
The DNC had taken part in some of the legal efforts to combat Griffin’s challenges.
Griffin responded to some of the Democrats’ claims in his statement, saying that “this effort has always been about upholding the rule of law and making sure that every legal vote in an election is counted.”
The State Board of Elections will now proceed to formally certify the race results. After a court battle, state Republicans took control of the board, raising concerns among Democrats about the possibility of overturning Supreme Court race results.
The new GOP majority on the board voted 3-2, just hours after Griffin conceded, to replace the group’s executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, with Sam Hayes, an attorney who has long worked for state Republicans.
Republicans were able to take control of the board after the GOP-controlled Legislature passed a bill last year that transferred the authority to appoint members to the panel from the governor, a Democrat in North Carolina, to the auditor, a position Republicans won in the 2024 election. Prior to losing their supermajority in the Legislature, GOP lawmakers successfully overrode the governor’s veto.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld the law last week, allowing Republican state Auditor Dave Boliek to appoint a new board.
