The North Carolina State Supreme Court ruled on the famous Griffin case (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see my previous posts here and here). The good news is that they removed about 60,000 contested ballots from the case. They agreed that voters whose files may not include their full drivers license or last four social security numbers should not have their votes thrown out. They called it a minor administrative issue, the responsibility for which lies with the NC government, not the voters. So the vast majority of the disputed votes have been restored as legitimate votes.

There is a small category that they said should not be counted. These are people who supposedly live abroad and have never lived in North Carolina. There are questions whether that is true or not, but it’s just is a couple of hundred votes. So let’s put that aside for now.

However, they agreed with the Republican plaintiff that there were issues with votes from abroad, since there was no ID provided. So those votes, they said, could be discarded UNLESS the voters concerned provided an ID within 30 days to prove they were who they said they were.

Again, before election day, there was NO REQUIREMENT for people voting abroad to provide such ID. So this also is not the fault of the voters. Apparently most of these votes came from military personnel serving abroad or college students (like my son) who had a study abroad program last fall.

The decision was 4-2. Allison Briggs, the one fighting this case, is on the NC Supreme Court but has recused herself (as she should have). There is one other Democratic justice who voted against this ruling, as did one Republican justice. The four in the majority were all Republicans.

While I’m glad they dropped the 60,000 votes, I disagree with the ruling. It changes the rules after the election is over. If they wanted to require ID, they should have decided that BEFORE the election, not as a Hail Mary attempt to win a seat that the Republicans lost.

And here’s the other thing. I’m not a lawyer and no expert on the law. But Republican Griffin is only trying to throw out the votes from four, or maybe six, of North Carolina’s 100 counties. How can a court rule in favor of that? If it’s wrong or illegal, shouldn’t be be wrong or illegal for ALL voters in those circumstances? But no. They are only challenging the overseas votes from Guilford County (home to Greensboro), Durham County (home to Durham), Forsyth County(home to Winston-Salem), and Buncombe County (home to Asheville). All of these just HAPPEN to be heavily Democratic-leaning counties and with major colleges or universities, so probably a lot of study abroad students.

I have no idea how the courts can allow Griffin to handpick just a few counties to impose this requirement upon and allow all the others to go untouched. I will selfishly say that I’m glad Wake County isn’t being challenged, because my son was one of those overseas voters. But if it were, I would work with him to get whatever verification is necessary for his vote to be counted.

Briggs is appealing to federal court, so we’ll see what happens. But at least 60,000 NC voters can breathe a sigh of relief that some error in their drivers license number paperword isn’t eliminating their right to have voted in this election.