Raleigh, NC (AP) – The Supreme Court of Northern Carolina ruled on Friday that tens of thousands of voting bulletins of the races disputed by the candidate for flight in November unresolved election For a headquarters in the field, you must stay in the election counting.
The decision partially reverses Last week’s decision by a panel of the intermediate level court of appeal which had favored the republican Jefferson Griffin, who closely follows the associate judge Democrat Allison Riggs.
But a majority of judges – all registered Republicans – suggested the determinations of the lower court according to which additional ballots of two other categories that Griffin disputed were wrongly in the count. Some of these voters – potentially thousands of people who serve in the army or live abroad – would always have the possibility of transforming a photo identification or a form of exception of identification for their choice in the race to stay in the count, according to the order in force of the court.
The ordinance of the Supreme Court should not fully resolve the tight race between Griffin and Riggs, which leads Griffin by 734 votes of more than 5.5 million ballots in their race. It is the only election of 2024 in the country that is still not decided.
Riggs heads for the Federal Court
It is also not known if the exceptional ballots which could ultimately be withdrawn from the count could reverse the result in Griffin, himself the current judge of the Court of Appeal. Griffin did not sit on the panel of three judges, the majority of whom ruled for him last week, and Riggs did not participate in the deliberations of the Supreme Court.
The lawyers of Riggs filed a request on Friday evening to a tribunal of the American district of Raleigh asking a judge to issue an injunction preventing the decisions of the Court of Appeal of the State immediately.
Riggs and the State Board of Elections, which had previously expelled official protests from Griffin of more than 65,000 voting bulletins covering three categories, had reported plans to return to the Federal Court if necessary, if the judges are stored on the side of Griffin to potentially plead federal laws on elections and voting rights.
Errors cannot cause canceled voting ballots
The largest category of disputed voters – around 60,000 – included voting ballots or even last fall by people registered to vote since 2004, but their files have no driving license number or the last four figures for a social security number.
Friday’s dominant opinion said that the court of appeal was wrong by declaring these ballots should not have been counted. Indeed, according to the opinion, the blame rests with the State Board of Elections for having failed for years to correctly collect these digital identifiers, not to voters. These voters have finally proven their identity by complying with the new law on the identification of the photo of the State, and the long -standing legal previous says that these errors of elections managers cannot lead to the violation of the votes, indicates the order.
“Consequently, we cannot agree with the Court of Appeal according to which the board of directors made an error by counting their ballots,” said the order. The Court of Appeal which stops on registrations if it had been confirmed, would also have given these voters for about three weeks to provide identification figures which, if checked, would mean that their bulletins would have counted.
More time to “heal” the ballots
A majority of the six judges participating in the case refused to modify most of the decision of the court of appeal which determined the voting bulletins of a category of military or overseas voters who did not provide photo of photo identification or identification exceptional forms were not eligible. But instead of giving these voters 15 working days to provide an identity document or a form to keep them eligible, the dominant order led a deadline for “healing” in 30 calendar days.
And the High Court held the Court of Appeal in place by judging that those of the third category – potentially hundreds of foreign voters who have never lived in the United States – were not eligible on the basis of the laws on the residence of the State to make ballots and that their choices must be withdrawn from total.
The lawyers of Riggs and the Board of Directors said that the votes disputed by Griffin had been legally expressed by the voters according to the rules in place for the November elections and should remain in the count.
Decision reactions
Riggs declared in a press release that even if it was satisfied that the judges reversed a large part of the decision of the Court of Appeal, it will not abandon “in my fight to protect the fundamental freedoms for which our soldiers and their families have sacrificed so much”.
Griffin Campaign’s spokesman Paul Shumaker said that Friday’s decision was “in accordance with what we asked in our initial file”.
Associate judge Anita Earls, the only democrat among the participating judges on Friday, entered a granted opinion of nearly 40 pages. While containing that the cancellation of voting bulletins on the basis of registration problems would have been inappropriate, Earls wrote that the dominant order, if it was held, if not “obliges the unequal treatment of the voters of the North Carolina and breaks their constitutional right of the state to vote”.
In another opinion, the Republican associate judge Richard Dietz wrote that the courts should have conceived to carry out a complete appeal exam, then declare Griffin’s allegations could not be made to modify a previous election. The Supreme Court did not hold any oral argument before Friday’s decision.
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The story has been updated to correct where the lawyers of Riggs have filed a federal legal request in Raleigh, not in Wilmington.
