Source: Editorial Board
Election Day was more than a month ago. Following multiple recounts and a rejected attempt to throw out 60,000 valid ballots, the results of the race for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court are clear to everyone except for the man who lost the race.
North Carolina voters chose Justice Allison Riggs to keep her seat on the court. Though the race was close – Riggs won by around 740 votes out of 5.5 million cast – it’s been made clear that Republican Jefferson Griffin lost.
As a judge and someone who presumably understands and respects the law, now is the time for Griffin to accept the results, concede the race and move on with his life. He is, after all, still an appeals court judge in North Carolina.
Surely Griffin understands that one of the most important features of our democracy is that the people in our country are the ones who choose their leaders. That doesn’t mean that everyone is going to be happy with the choices that are made, but we are given the opportunity to have our say and the will of the people is absolute and final. There is no person or group who can overrule that. Our laws are clear in that the will of the people must stand.
The will of North Carolina’s voters must also stand. Griffin is allowed to be unhappy that he was not the winner, but the full process has run its course and there is now only one thing left for him to do: concede.
Riggs’ win and Griffin’s loss has been confirmed by a statewide canvass and then re-confirmed by a statewide machine recount and a partial hand recount. Additionally, the state elections board has said there will be no further recounts and they rejected the Griffin campaign’s baseless challenge to throw out more than 60,000 ballots.
There comes a time when enough is enough and the fight is over. That time is now for Griffin and his team. He can, and likely will, seek legal action, though it’s unclear what case he thinks he has. Phil Strach, an attorney representing North Carolina Republicans, even admitted to the elections board that he didn’t know of any particular voters out of the 60,000+ whose votes were challenged who were actually ineligible to vote. If multiple recounts show you lost and you admit that you’re just randomly selecting voters to disenfranchise, it’s hard to see what legal remedy there even is to overturn the obvious preference of the state’s voters.
Continuing to try to steal a win is a disgrace to our democracy. Should Griffin get his case in front of the 5-2 Republican state Supreme Court, anything could happen.
Just before casting the deciding vote to deny the 60,000-vote protest, State Board of Elections Chairman Alan Hirsch called the GOP effort to throw those votes out an affront to democracy itself.
“The idea that someone could have been registered to vote, came to vote — and then had their vote discarded — is anathema to the democratic system and simply cannot be tolerated,” he said.
