NC Supreme Court race - Riggs ahead +734 | Appeals Court sides with Griffin

  • Thread starter Thread starter rodoheel
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 318
  • Views: 10K
  • Politics 
rebeltarheel0408 said:
Assuming Griffin ends up winning in the end, what is the actual result? That all 60k ballots are thrown out for his election only? Or that all ballots are thrown out and every federal, state, and local race has to be retabulated? Do the local Boards of Election have the ability to see who each ineligible voter voted for?

Surely he's not expecting this to turn a 734 vote deficit into a 59,266 vote win, right?
Click to expand...
Yes, the ballots would be DQed for this race only.
 
rebeltarheel0408 said:
Assuming Griffin ends up winning in the end, what is the actual result? That all 60k ballots are thrown out for his election only? Or that all ballots are thrown out and every federal, state, and local race has to be retabulated? Do the local Boards of Election have the ability to see who each ineligible voter voted for?

Surely he's not expecting this to turn a 734 vote deficit into a 59,266 vote win, right?
Click to expand...
The ballots Giffin challengened were not randomly selected. They were selected from counties that were heavily Democratic. Identical ballots from counties that were heavily Republican were not challenged. Griffin just assumed that throwing out ballots in heavily Democratic counties would tilt the election towards him. Griffin is undoubtedly correct. This is dispicable.
 
05C40 said:
The ballots Giffin challengened were not randomly selected. They were selected from counties that were heavily Democratic. Identical ballots from counties that were heavily Republican were not challenged. Griffin just assumed that throwing out ballots in heavily Democratic counties would tilt the election towards him. Griffin is undoubtedly correct. This is dispicable.
Click to expand...
So Riggs can still challenge the identical Republican leaning ballots to be thrown out too? Correct? Surely it’s not too late to bring that up. After all Griffin didn’t follow the proper timeline to challenge. Why should Riggs be held to a different standard in that regard?
 
05C40 said:
The ballots Giffin challengened were not randomly selected. They were selected from counties that were heavily Democratic. Identical ballots from counties that were heavily Republican were not challenged. Griffin just assumed that throwing out ballots in heavily Democratic counties would tilt the election towards him. Griffin is undoubtedly correct. This is dispicable.
Click to expand...
If that is true, and I think it is, then it really undercuts this type of reasoning by the NC Court of Appeal:

The post-election protest process preserves the fundamental right to vote in free elections “on equal terms.” See N.C. Const. art. I, § 10. “It is well settled in this State that” this fundamental right includes “‘the right to vote on equal terms,’” and “to participate in an electoral process that is necessarily structured to maintain the
integrity of the democratic system.”

How is it voting "on equal terms" if only ballots from heavily democratic areas are challenged? That seems quite deliberately a strategy to vote on "non-equal terms." If you are going to allow an after-the-fact challenge to registration status, then it absolutely should be applied across the board, and not just to a targeted group of 60,000 ballots that are more likely to be democratic. That type of remedy is not promoting equality of the vote. It is promoting non-equality.
 
RaiGuy said:
Can the people whose votes were removed sue the state (or whoever if in charge)?
Click to expand...
In theory, maybe. In reality, what would they be asking for? They won't get their votes reinstated. They won't collect money damages, because they can't prove that they suffered any. We have no good metric for how much a vote is worth (and in reality, if we tried to make such a metric, the amount would almost certainly be tiny).

But this just goes to the absurdity of Griffin's argument. The voters did not in any way fuck up, because even if they knew there were issues, they couldn't have done anything about them. The people who would have both standing and resources to sue are the campaigns. And if Griffin had brought this suit in 2023, we wouldn't be so contemptuous of it. I mean, it might still be a bad-faith, mostly bullshit argument, but at least it wouldn't be trying to change the rules after the game was played. But they didn't.

IIRC, one of these cases was brought to the PA Supreme Court and was dismissed on laches -- which is a principle that says you can't win a case, even if your position is meritorious, if you have unreasonably delayed to the detriment of other parties. One classic example of this can occur in the patent context. Let's say you have a patent on something -- I don't know, let's say, you have a patent on something related to a smart phone. Then you notice someone who you think is ripping off your patent. The proper thing to do is to tell them to stop, and then bring suit. But instead of suing, you sit back and do nothing until that other company sells like a million of those phones -- and then you jump in and say, ah you've breached my patent. Now I have control over your whole business. A court could say, "nah, you should have brought that claim when it was ripe, instead of waiting for the other person to first build up a huge pot of money that you want to take."

Same thing here. The proper time to bring the lawsuit was before the election. Then the problem can be fixed, and people can go vote. But if the problem was fixed, then those voters would vote as normal -- and since your goal is to disenfranchise people on the other side, that's not what you want. You want them to vote with "illegal" procedures and then reap a windfall by invalidating their votes. Waiting until after the election should be strictly prohibited and dismissed under laches (and there are several other grounds for denying Griffin's challenge, both constitutional and federal statutory, but laches is in some way the most straightforward).
 
I cannot speak for the other counties, but I looked at the list and of the ballots he wants thrown out, almost all of the people I knew on the list likely voted for him. I don't think throwing all the ones out they want will necessarily result in a win for him
 
And yet, Republican judges will continue to speak at CLE seminars on the ethical standards that must be observed by lawyers in order to maintain the dignity of the legal profession so that the public will continue to trust the courts as an unbiased caller of balls and strikes as they see them. Horse dung. Justice in America is no longer blind. Justice in America is whatever Vlad "the Ras" Putin--and his beholden minions--decide is in Putin's best interest.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top