North Carolina Supreme Court Declines To Hand Seat To Republican Loser ... Yet
And the danged race still ain’t certified yet!
The race for a North Carolina state Supreme Court seat is still undecided — the very last undecided race in the country! How is this even happening? And the legal to-dos are still going around like a Concord racetrack!
You may recall that in November, Judge Jefferson Griffin lost the election for a state supreme court seat by 734 votes, after multiple recounts. So he made like kudzu and covered every county in the state with hundreds of lawsuits, and whined like a hound dog to the state board of elections about it. The North Carolina Board of Elections told him to go suck a sweet tea, and instead of appealing to the Superior Court of Wake County like he was supposed to, he directly Karened to the state Supreme Court that he aspires to join, EMERGENCY demanding that they not certify the election in favor of his opponent, incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, and change the law after the election already happened and throw out 66,049 legally cast ballots. And, shockingly, the state Supreme Court did NOT tell him to fuck on off. They paused certification of the election, even though there was NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER of any kind of fraud. Only Griffin’s griping that state voter ID laws should have been retroactive, and absentee/overseas ballots should be thrown out too.
PREVIOUSLY!
On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court sent Griffin’s complaint back to the Superior Court of Wake County, which is where appeals to decisions of the State Board of Elections were supposed to have been heard in the first place. Griffin’s lawyer, Craig Schauer, card-carrying member of the Federalist Society, did file a complaint there, but then he withdrew it, because he whups-plum-forgot to inform the North Carolina Board of Elections that he was doing that.
So now Griffin’s appeal to the Board of Elections is headed back to the Superior Court of Wake County, which happens to be ALL DEMOCRATS after the defeat of incumbent Republicans Becky Holt and Graham Shirley in favor of Democrats Sean Cole and Jennifer Bedford. Well, no wonder Griffin wanted to hop, skip and jump right over them!
But also meanwhile, in federal court, the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals is fixing to hear arguments about the case on Monday. US Chief District Judge and Trump appointee Richard Myers had already ruled against Griffin that there were no federal issues involved and sent it back to the state Supreme Court, but then Riggs and the State Elections Board asked to have it heard in federal court, because the state Supreme Court changing the voting rules after votes have already been cast and counted smelled like some violations of federal law getting cooked up.
So Monday, Leonard Leo’s “Honest Election Project” lawyers will be going toe-to-toe against ACLU lawyers in Richmond. The Fourth Circuit is currently 9-4 Democrats, by the way.
This North Carolina Supreme Court race was important to Cleta Mitchell and her band of election-denying Christian Dominionists because if they were able to succeed in throwing out 66,049 legal, legitimate votes to get their loser candidate elected, that would be a model they could use all over the country.
Not just yet, Cleta. Not just yet.
[Griffin v. State Board of Elections/ WUNC/ Carolina Journal/ NC Newsline]
It bears repeating this is entirely for spiking the football
The court is 5-2 Republican. Whoever wins this will have no bearing on that whatsoever. This is entirely a “Democrat wins are now illegitimate” tactic
OT: AlterNet:
Olmsted — citing Consumer Price Index data — notes that egg prices hit an all-time high on the third day of Trump's second presidency.