Allison Riggs, a Democratic justice on the North Carolina supreme court, is battling to keep her seat after a recent court ruling paved the way to overturn her election victory, telling the Guardian in an interview: “This is not just a North Carolina problem. This is an existential threat to democracy.”
In November, Riggs won an election for the state supreme court by a razor-thin 734 votes. But on Friday, the North Carolina supreme court ordered the state board of elections to give certain overseas voters 30 days to prove their eligibility in order to have the votes they cast more than five months ago count.
Riggs has already asked a federal court to intervene and halt the ruling, which could lead to the election results being overturned. She told the Guardian she sees her court challenge as about more than just her seat.
“I worry that this is honing a playbook to be used in the future, that people in power hold on to power by selectively challenging election outcomes that they don’t like,” she said.
The state supreme court’s ruling was the latest in a long-winding legal saga that has drawn increasing alarm from Riggs, a former voting rights attorney who was appointed to the state supreme court in 2023, and other observers. After the election Jefferson Griffin, Riggs’s Republican opponent and a judge on the state court of appeals, challenged the votes of more than 65,000 people.
Even though all of the voters had followed the state’s rules, he essentially argued the rules were wrong. More than 60,000 of those challenged lacked driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their social security numbers in their voting records. And a few thousand more were overseas voters who had either not provided identification or had never lived in the state.
The North Carolina state board of elections dismissed the challenges in December. But on 4 April, the North Carolina court of appeals overturned that decision, saying more than 60,000 voters in the state had 15 business days to prove their eligibility or else their votes would be discarded. Last Friday, the North Carolina supreme court narrowed that ruling, saying only the overseas voters had to prove their eligibility within 30 days. Several thousand voters are still at risk – more than enough to overturn the election.
Before she was appointed to the court, Riggs was one of the most prominent voting rights attorneys in North Carolina, litigating for years in hard-nosed battles over the state’s voter ID law and severe partisan gerrymandering. Now, as a supreme court justice and candidate, Riggs says she’s waging a hugely consequential fight to have the results of her own election honored, with profound stakes for democracy across the US.
The Guardian spoke to Riggs the day after the supreme court’s decision.
Why should people care about what’s happening in your race?
We’ve been trying to communicate with folks that this is not just a North Carolina problem. This is an existential threat to democracy.
Remember in North Carolina, Donald Trump won. No one was fussing about that. If people in power can decide, ‘Oh, this election law was in place, but I don’t like it any more. And if I change that rule, then a different person wins the election’ … democracy cannot exist in those conditions.
We are fighting tooth and nail because I understand that this is not just about protecting service members – I’d be fighting just as hard for them – but I also know that this fight that I am leading down here is to make sure that we don’t see, from here on out, the door opened to changing election rules after elections to manipulate outcomes.
It’s like dropping a match in a dry forest. If this catches, we won’t be able to contain the spread.
Can you walk me through the supreme court’s decision on Friday and what happens next?
I was gratified to see that the court of appeals’ decision to risk 60,000 voter registrations, and those voters’ ballots, was reversed. That was deeply erroneous and the biggest bucket of voters.
But unfortunately, the North Carolina supreme court greenlit disenfranchising somewhere between 5,500 and 7,000 voters, predominantly military voters, but also military families who are able to use these kinds of ballots that are designed for military voters … They’re serving our country in uniform, domestically and abroad. It obviously also includes foreign service agents, missionaries out in the field. But at core, it represents a significant attack on the right of service members and their families to participate in the political process.
Federal laws are at stake here, and these attacks on voters should be resolved in federal court … These voters who are serving our country, they did nothing wrong. They followed every rule in place, including state laws that were passed by a Republican legislature in 2011 and have been used in every election since then without any challenge.
We know that these voters did everything that they were told to do. And a court cannot, consistent with the federal constitution, come in and change laws after the election to disenfranchise voters.
Why do you think this much effort has gone into trying to overturn your victory?
I can’t speculate on other people’s motives. I worry that this is honing a playbook to be used in the future, that people in power hold on to power by selectively challenging election outcomes that they don’t like.
At core, I believe that people get to decide elections. That in a democracy, in a country that holds on to the ideals that we hold on to, that people get to decide who wins, not politicians, not people in power, not courts. It’s the actual voters.
We’ve seen similar efforts to contest election results in 2020 and 2022. But I don’t know if we’ve ever really seen courts endorse some of these theories to throw out votes after the election.
The North Carolina court of appeals ruling from [4 April] was the first time in American history we’ve seen a court do that – change rules after an election. We just know it is absolutely inconsistent with longstanding rules, federal constitutional principles.
We put the pens down at some point before an election so that the rules are in place and that the people understand what they have to do, what’s expected of them. This idea that now five, six months after an election is over, voters are going to know that they have to do something else. People move on with their lives. That’s why the pens down principle exists.
Your race is the only one that remains uncalled by The Associated Press. What has it been like to be in that kind of limbo?
It’s challenging. But I am very heartened by the fact that I won this election.
North Carolina voters put their faith in me to serve on the supreme court for eight more years because they believed that I would not be bullied, that I would stand strong in my constitutional convictions and be that independent jurist that this country needs so much at this moment. There’s never been one second of one day in the last five and a half months that I had any question about the righteousness of the fight or my ability to carry this to the end.
I just keep thinking for anyone to be going through this, the person who probably knows election rules and voting laws in North Carolina better than anyone else. It must be such a surreal experience.
If folks want to pick a fight with the wrong person, I will not back down from defending the fundamental right to vote. There is no universe in which I yield an inch on this.
It is my honor to fight for North Carolina voters. It is my honor to defend our service members’ right to participate in the political process.
I know your parents were among the people challenged. Have you heard from other voters who are at risk of having their votes thrown out?
It’s been non-stop over the last five and a half months. Folks are scared. Folks are confused.
My mom got a notice, a postcard. My dad was challenged. He didn’t get the postcard. My mom got the postcard from the North Carolina Republican party saying her vote might be the subject of a protest. She didn’t know what an election protest was. It had a QR code on it. She’s not really savvy with QR codes. My dad said to her, well, that’s junk mail from the North Carolina Republican party. And these are folks whose daughter was a former voting rights attorney, whose daughter is a sitting justice from the North Carolina supreme court.
Every day this drags on, it creates a sense of distrust and cynicism about our election system that is undeserved and deeply harmful. This nonsense long needed to end. It needed to end a long time ago.
