What's Going On? Terrible Optics From NC Board of Elections As Supreme Court Race Still Not Decided

As RedState previously reported, Election Day was a good day for Republican judicial candidates in North Carolina, where they won all three Court of Appeals races, flipping a seat in the process as the icing on the cake.

Also on the ballot this year in the Old North State was the race between NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs and Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin. A win from Griffin would make the state's court 6-1 GOP. A win from Riggs would keep it 5-2 GOP.

On the Wednesday morning after the election, Griffin was up by around 10,000 votes which some folks thought would have led to calls that he was the winner.

But he wasn't as county boards of elections continued counting absentee ballots including some that came in on Election Day as well as those received from military-overseas voters, which had until Thursday the 14th (the day before county canvass took place) to be received. There were also the provisional ballots that had to be reviewed and decisions made on which ones could be included in the totals.

Over the course of what was supposed to be a 10-day canvass period, Griffin's lead gradually shrunk as more counties completed their counts and made their results official. By Friday midday (Nov, 15th), which was the day final official results were supposed to be posted, his lead was down to around 3,900 votes.

Here is where things got a little hairy, though.

Everyone was waiting for Wake County's provisionals to be tallied and uploaded. Wake County, for those who don't know, is North Carolina's most populous county. It is also a very Dem-heavy county. And though they had "finished acting" on provisionals Thursday the 14th, they indicated the numbers wouldn't show up on the state election results page until Friday:

There is no reason those numbers shouldn't be uploaded and counted tonight. Meck does that as do counties across the state. What reason does Wake have to not upload the results to the system and publicly announce the updated counts after they were tabulated tonight? #ncpol https://t.co/9OaKEQ3tcv
— Lawrence Shaheen Jr. (@LawrenceShaheen) November 14, 2024

But as Griffin's lead seesawed up and down throughout the day Friday, there was nothing from Wake County. Then, his lead started consistently dwindling later in the afternoon as more provisionals were added and vote totals made official from smaller counties.

Still, there was nothing from Wake.

Around 8 pm, though, they finally updated their numbers and magically it netted Riggs just enough to move ahead of Griffin by around 150 votes.

There were grumblings among folks on social media (including yours truly) that how all of this was playing out did not exactly inspire confidence in the election process.

Equally as maddening was that about an hour before Wake posted their results, the state board of elections issued a memo indicating several counties (with one semi-big county, Forsyth, that went for Kamala Harris) would not be done by the deadline and would be meeting again Monday to finish up - even as a Supreme Court seat (and a couple of other state legislative races) hung in the balance:

Just pathetic, @NCSBE, considering we have a tight Supreme Court race w/ GOP candidate currently leading, the optics are awful & make it look like some counties need "extra time" to see how many ballots are needed to put certain candidates on top. #ncpol https://t.co/DRJbk27XDU
— Sister Toldjah 💙 (@sistertoldjah) November 16, 2024

Also on folks' minds was what happened in New Hanover County, where party registration is roughly divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats (but with many more unaffiliated voters):

On Monday, County Manager Chris Coudriet informed commissioners the county attorney’s office suggested to the elections office it retain outside legal counsel in regards to an apparent violation of state law.
According to a Nov. 6 statement from Elections Director Rae Hunter-Havens, absentee ballots received after Oct. 31 would be processed and counted on Nov. 14 along with provisional ballots. The Oct. 31 “administrative cutoff” departs from state law; General Statute 163‑234 indicates “absentee ballots received prior to election day shall be counted on election day.”
Any absentee ballots received on Election Day are to be counted during the 10-day canvass period.

So with at least one county appearing to be in violation of state law and several others that did not get done with their reporting by the Friday deadline, that understandably has a lot of people here scratching their heads and asking questions as to how this could have happened:

If you were trying to convince conspiracy theorists you were stealing the election, this is how you would count the votes. The sheer amount of incompetence boggles the mind. You had one job! And 10 days to do it! #NCPOL https://t.co/WvWlD10UCC
— Brent Woodcox (@BrentWoodcox) November 16, 2024

The frick…. Why in the heck is there a “deadline” if it’s moveable? https://t.co/t15NRvnBir
— JL (@aggou) November 16, 2024

As for where the race stands right now, Riggs currently leads Griffin by... 24 votes. On Monday, whoever ends up on top in the race is not expected to be up by more than 200 or so, which likely will lead to a call from the second-place finisher for a recount:

One county reported canvass results to the @ncsbe site last night, so we now have a NC State Supreme Court justice election with a margin of [checks notes] 24 votes.

That's a margin of .00043329% of the votes cast.

A few counties will not complete canvass until Monday.#ncpol pic.twitter.com/UiSiLEDnXF
— Chris Cooper (@chriscooperwcu) November 16, 2024

Fun fact about close NC Supreme Court races, the last one was in 2020, which saw Republican Associate Justice Paul Newby defeat Chief Justice Cheri Beasley (D) by 401 votes. This came after Newby was ahead on election night by a razor-thin margin but Beasley requested a recount soon after. Things went south for her when it was discovered that the only "new" votes her campaign wanted to be counted were the ones that came from Democrats:

In 2020, losing candidate Beasley (D) conceded after it was reported that the campaign was concealing the fact that it was only seeking to count additional Democrat voters, not Republicans. https://t.co/zB9vvR7NlA #ncpol pic.twitter.com/c2qSIJkEID
— Mike Rusher (@mjrusher) November 10, 2024

There's never a dull moment in North Carolina politics, that's for sure.

As for the current battle between Riggs and Griffin, we'll keep you posted on the latest developments.