The Democratic National Committee tried Friday to block North Carolina Republicans’ attempt to invalidate tens of thousands of ballots from the November election and disrupt the state Supreme Court race that Democrats won.
The DNC filed a legal action Friday to intervene in a lawsuit filed in late December by the Republican National Committee in Wake County, North Carolina, seeking to throw out votes due to alleged missing information on registration forms.
This week, the North Carolina Supreme Court blocked the state’s election board from certifying the results of a November Supreme Court race that their Democratic colleague, Allison Riggs, won by a margin of just over 700 votes. The Republican candidate, Jefferson Griffin, has made claims about missing voter registration information in multiple legal documents before and after the election.
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The actions in North Carolina have Democrats and democracy advocates concerned and fighting back over fears that voters could be disenfranchised and the election could be overturned.
“For months, North Carolina Republicans have attempted to steal an election in plain sight at taxpayer expense, attempting to throw out some 60,000 legal votes cast in the race for North Carolina Supreme Court justice, DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “On November 5, North Carolina voters elected Judge Allison Riggs. Their voice will be heard.”
The Wake County case alleges that a large portion of voters should not have been eligible to vote because they did not include driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers on their voter registration forms.
At issue is how the state has implemented the requirements under the Help America Vote Act. The state’s voter registration form asks people to provide their license or Social Security numbers, but it does not say this information is required. Those who did not provide either were given unique identification by state election officials and then required to show a document to prove their identity when voting. This has been the general process for 20 years without any problems, the DNC notes in its briefing, until Republicans took advantage of it during this election cycle.
The RNC lawsuit estimates that the state Board of Elections does not have this information about about 60,000 voters, whose ballots they believe should not be counted. They want the board to keep these ballots separate, contact affected voters to request the missing information and then remove their ballots from state and local contests if they don’t respond.
The lawsuit in Wake County is the “fifth attempt in 13 months to disenfranchise voters who allegedly did not include their driver’s license or Social Security number on their voter registration form,” the DNC wrote.
