TL/DR –
Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin is attempting to erase 60,000 votes in order to win the state Supreme Court elections which he lost to Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs. Voting rights advocate Kate Barr and a group of voters are protesting this move by reading out each of the names of the 60,000 voters whose votes are being challenged. Barr and the voters argue that Griffin is trying to steal the election and that there’s no valid reason for the voter registrations to be discarded as most of the contested voters are eligible and have been voting without issue for years.
A group of legal voters will gather in freezing weather to protest against an attempt to erase their votes.
As temperatures plummet below 30 degrees in Raleigh on Tuesday, a group led by voting rights advocate, Kate Barr, will assemble outside the North Carolina Supreme Court. They are protesting against Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin’s bid to invalidate 60,000 votes, potentially swinging the state supreme court election which he lost in November.
Barr and her group intend to read the names of each protested voter before dawn, demonstrating the scale of Griffin’s target. It’s anticipated that the process will take 17 hours, ending just before midnight.
Griffin, a Republican appellate court judge, lost the state supreme court election to Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes. However, he has requested the state supreme court, predominantly Republican, to throw out 60,000 ballots based on a discredited argument to discard voter registrations with incomplete state voter database information.
However, Barr states that these are eligible voters who have been voting without issue for years. “My inbox is full of dozens and dozens of challenged voters who are outraged, devastated, and confused,” she said. “They want to go and fix whatever the problem is so their vote can count and there’s nothing they can do and that feels really awful and like it is, it has brought me to tears on more than a few occasions.”
Notably, Barr has received responses from military members stationed overseas whose votes could potentially be discounted. “These are people who have raised their hands and offered to sacrifice their lives for our country, and now we won’t count their votes if Jefferson Griffin wins his case. That’s horrifying.”
‘There is nothing wrong with these voters.’
Barr emphasizes that all the challenged voters have followed the same registration process and have been voting without issues for years. In a long conversation, Riggs echoed this sentiment, concluding: “There is nothing wrong with these voters.”
‘It’s almost certainly meritless.’
While the case is currently circulating between the state supreme court and a federal appeals court, one Republican on the court, Justice Richard Dietz, seemed to reject Griffin’s argument. He dissented from the court’s decision to hear the case, arguing that Griffin’s argument “is almost certainly meritless.”
‘This is not just another step.’
In a virtual news conference about the lawsuit on Monday, Roy Cooper, now the former governor of North Carolina, claimed that Griffin’s lawsuit was more than a normal election protest. He concluded: “Justice Allison Riggs won this election, period. Two separate recounts have confirmed this fact. Republicans know this. Judge Griffin … knows this.”
Their names, if not their voices, will be heard on Tuesday at 6 a.m.
—
Read More US News; North Carolina News