Sanity has been restored in North Carolina

A ruling in favor of the law and a concession mean a November election is finally over.

By Stephen Richer

“That principle will be familiar to anyone who has played a sport or board game. You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done.”—Judge Richard E. Myers II, Chief United States District Judge

It’s finally over. Sanity has been restored in North Carolina.

On Monday, Judge Richard E. Myers II of the Eastern District of North Carolina ruled in favor of long-standing principles of election law. He ruled that we don’t punish voters for any mistakes of government officials. And he ruled that we don’t change election laws after an election and apply them retroactively.

In doing so, Myers overturned the astonishing orders last month from the North Carolina Court of Appeals and the North Carolina Supreme Court.

This finally affirms the narrow victory from November 2024 of Democrat Allison Riggs over Republican Jefferson Griffin for the last seat on North Carolina’s Supreme Court.

Earlier today, Griffin conceded the race and said he will not appeal Myers’s ruling.

For me, less interesting than the victor (I probably would have voted for the Republican) is how we got here.

Griffin claimed two main things on appeal: (1) that 60,273 votes should be invalidated because of long-standing government mistakes, (2) that a few thousand military and overseas votes – only from heavily Democratic counties – should be invalidated despite that the voters followed the law as it had been told to them and as it had long been understood.

This was not a hard election law case. This should have been resolved quickly. As election law expert Rick Hasen wrote shortly after the Myers ruling, “The only surprise (and disappointment) here is that the North Carolina Supreme Court was willing to bless this attempted election subversion.”

It’s obvious that Myers felt the same way. Consider these parts of his opinion:

“[R]etroactive changes to election procedures raise serious due process concerns particularly where those changes result in invalidating the votes of individuals who cast ballots in reliance on previously established rules.”

“As to overseas military and civilian voters, the rules of the road were settled at the time of the 2024 election. … That final rule was in effect for months prior to the election, and no one challenged it.”

“Voters are entitled to rely on their election officials, and it would constitute a fiction to contend that the voters had a duty, at their peril, somehow to foresee the ruling of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court invalidating their ballots.”

“A post-election change of practice that results in the discarding of votes is abominable under the Constitution of the United States.”

So why did those state courts – the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court – rule in such a shocking, precedent-ignoring way?

Did they simply misfire on the law? Or did they – elected partisan officials – simply feel political pressures that are less in play for federal judges with life tenure?

Either way, the state court rulings, though now corrected, will undoubtedly encourage legal mischief in future elections.

Stephen Richer, a Republican, is the former elected Maricopa County recorder, responsible for that county's elections. He is chief executive of Republic Affairs, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center, and a board member of State Democracy Defenders.

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