A Trump-appointed federal judge on Monday ordered the North Carolina elections board to certify results showing Democrat Allison Riggs as the winner of the state Supreme Court race against Republican Jefferson Griffin, the latter of whom couldn’t take the L, and graciously allow the winner to be seated.
Griffin challenged 60,273 legal North Carolina voters—registered voters who showed ID to early vote in the November 2024 election, including military members serving overseas. Griffin has been at this for nearly six months now, and it could possibly come to an end, finally, unless Griffin appeals the ruling. There have already been two recounts in the close election that Riggs won by just 734 votes over Griffin.
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers ruled that Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, cannot “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”
“You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” Myers wrote in a 68-page order. “Permitting parties to ‘upend the set rules’ of an election after the election has taken place can only produce ‘confusion and turmoil'” that “‘threatens to undermine public confidence in the federal courts, state agencies, and the elections themselves,'” he wrote.
However, the judge delayed his decisions for seven days to give Griffin time to appeal the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
