WILMINGTON, NC — Today, Protect Democracy filed an amicus brief on behalf of the League of Women Voters of North Carolina (LWVNC) and six registered North Carolina voters who are US citizens and meet the eligibility requirements for voting in the 2024 election. 

These six voters — and a number of LWVNC members — are among the more than 60,000 registered North Carolina voters whom Jefferson Griffin, who narrowly lost a hard-fought election for the North Carolina Supreme Court, is attempting to disenfranchise, asserting that the voters “never provided the statutorily required information to become lawful voter registrants.” 

However, as the brief makes clear: “Even a cursory review of Griffin’s list of challenged voters — a task Griffin apparently never undertook — belies his assertion that improperly registered voters cast ballots in his race and instead reveals voters who are, for instance, lifelong and longtime North Carolina residents . . . who followed the rules in place when they registered and cast their ballots, and who voted [regularly] for decades.” Griffin is asking government officials and the courts to ignore constitutional protections for voters and install him as a jurist on North Carolina’s highest court.

Per the brief: “Griffin seeks to achieve this electoral coup, despite having never provided the voters whose ballots he’s challenging with adequate notice of his complaints or an opportunity to be heard. He seeks to invalidate these ballots only for his own race, and he only challenges ballots of voters . . . who voted early in-person or on by absentee ballot, leaving in the final tally identically situated voters who cast ballots on Election Day. To grant Griffin’s requested relief would violate both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.”

In that North Carolina Supreme Court race, Judge Allison Riggs (the incumbent Democrat) beat Judge Griffin by just over 700 votes. 

Along with the League, a nonpartisan, grassroots, membership organization, the six North Carolina voters (amici) filing the brief are: 

• Susan Copland Arnold Rudolph: Born and raised in Asheville, 57 years old, her family has been in Western North Carolina since the early 1800s. Her great-grandmother worked the polls every election and often took Rudolph with her. Rudolph has resided in-state at the same address for the last 12 years and is a regular voter in North Carolina elections. This year, she voted in person in the primary and general elections, both times using her North Carolina driver’s license as her required photo ID.
• Heba Salama: Born 1978 in Chapel Hill, where she spent her childhood and first registered to vote at 18. Salama has since remained a regular North Carolina voter and has never resided out of state. She provided sufficient information to election officials to prove her identity and eligibility to vote, including when she voted in the 2024 primary and general elections, both times showing her North Carolina driver’s license. 
• Jennifer Baddour: Born and raised in North Carolina, 50 years old, she has lived in-state almost her entire life. She registered to vote in 1992 and has since regularly voted in North Carolina elections, including for the past 15 years from her current address. She voted in person in the 2024 primary and general elections, providing her North Carolina driver’s license. She volunteered as a greeter at the polling place on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus and was overwhelmed with pride to see so many first-time voters exercise their right to vote.  
• Spring Dawson-McClure: Born and raised in North Carolina, she attended UNC-Chapel Hill and registered to vote for the first time in 1994 when she was 18. She moved out of state for graduate school and to begin her career, returning to North Carolina in 2012 and has since resided at the same Orange County address. She has voted in almost every election since moving back to Orange County. She voted in person in the 2024 primary and general elections and showed her North Carolina driver’s license as her required photo ID. 
• Iryna Merideth: Registered to vote 11 years ago at her naturalization ceremony in Durham, NC. She was born and raised in Ukraine and chose to become a US citizen, like her husband and child, in 2013. She has lived at her current address in Orange County for 10 years and voted regularly in North Carolina elections. She voted in person during the 2024 primary and general elections and presented her North Carolina driver’s license to poll workers in both elections. 
• Rani Dasi: A Chapel Hill, NC, resident, she registered to vote when she turned 18 and voted in nearly every election over the next four decades. Dasi is a three-time elected official in North Carolina, meaning that her registration status has been repeatedly verified by the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE). When she voted in the 2024 general election, she showed her North Carolina driver’s license as her required photo ID and confirmed with election officials that no information was missing from her voter registration file.    

"The data used to identify the 60,000 voters in this case has already been proven inaccurate and untrustworthy," said Jennifer Rubin, president of the League of Women Voters of North Carolina. "Some of these voters are League members themselves, who know and follow election rules and have been voting without issues for many years. This is an attempt to disqualify voters because the candidate didn't like the result. The League will always stand up against attempts to suppress the will of voters."

"The League's core mission is to protect voters and defend democracy, and that is what we are doing in this case," said Caren Short, director of legal and research at the League of Women Voters of the US. "If a candidate can throw out 60,000 votes after they lose their election, this poses a serious risk to voter confidence in our democracy."

“What Griffin and the other losing candidates are trying to do here is clear and that is steal the election,” says Anne Harden Tindall, special counsel at Protect Democracy and a native resident of North Carolina. ”They’re shouting about election integrity, but only seeking to have these ballots discounted in a handful of races that Republicans lost. They allege that voters didn't provide required information when they voted, but the information likely wasn't required for many of these voters and many others in fact did provide that information.” 

Background

Judge Griffin is one of a handful of losing candidates in North Carolina making meritless challenges first raised in “zombie lawsuits” that the RNC/NCGOP filed before the election. In August, the RNC/NCGOP filed a lawsuit asking to have 225,000 North Carolina voters removed from the rolls because of alleged technical errors in their voter files. The RNC/NCGOP asked the court to do so despite a federal law (NVRA) that prohibits systematically removing people from the rolls so close to an election. The RNC/NCGOP made no effort to have the case decided before the election, and so their “zombie lawsuit” remained dormant in the US District Court for the Eastern District of NC, until Griffin and three losing Republican candidates for the NC General Assembly, who are protesting their defeats, revived them.

The NCSBE recently dismissed all of the protests from the losing candidates for the NC Supreme Court and General Assembly because (1) the protesters hadn't given impacted voters sufficient notice, and (2) their claims were not supported by sufficient facts and were wrong on the law. Last week, Griffin filed litigation directly in the NC Supreme Court, seeking to prevent certification of incumbent Justice Allison Riggs's win and to declare him the winner based on the zombie lawsuit arguments; the NCSBE removed Griffin's case to federal court, where it is now; and Griffin filed a flurry of emergency motions in state and federal courts seeking emergency relief, which are now consolidated in federal court and which the federal court immediately and summarily denied. Griffin later filed a motion for a preliminary injunction and for remand, which Protect Democracy’s brief on behalf of the League and these six voters oppose.

For more information, or if you would like to speak with the attorneys or aforementioned amici, please use the media contact information above. 

A copy of the amicus brief is here.

More information about The League of Women Voters of North Carolina is here.