Dem
47
GOP
53
Democrat Allison Riggs was elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court last November by 734 votes. Loser Republican Jefferson Griffin didn't like that, so he is trying to get the seat the old fashioned way: having the courts hand it to him after the election. He sued, claiming that 60,000 voters should not have been allowed to vote because they didn't show a driver's license or provide a partial Social Security number when registering, as required by state law. However, the registrars didn't ask for them, so the voters can't actually be blamed.
On Friday, the state Supreme Court ruled that those 60,000 voters cannot be disenfranchised due to sloppy work on the part of the State Board of Elections and county officials. Those votes will thus not be uncounted.
However, Riggs is not home-free yet. The justices did rule that military and overseas voters who never provided ID when registering now have 30 days to cure their ballots or risk having them removed from the totals. The court did note that the Board of Elections never required this, so it is not exactly the voters' fault. There are enough of these ballots that it could overturn the election results. Given that the international mail often takes 2-3 weeks (each way), sending overseas voters a letter instructing them to mail back a copy of their passport may result in very few ballots being cured on time.
Finally, the Court also said that voters who never lived in North Carolina personally cannot vote in state elections. The confusion here is that the adult children of former North Carolina residents are allowed to vote in federal elections (by law), even if the adult children never lived in the U.S. themselves. This often applies to the children of military personnel stationed overseas. That law does not explicitly deal with state elections. Only a few hundred voters are in this category.
Associate Justice Anita Earls (D) wrote a blistering 40-page dissent arguing that courts should not rerun elections long after they are settled. Associate Justice Richard Dietz (R) also wrote an opinion stating that Griffin's claims "are not justiciable in a backward looking challenge to a past election."
Gov. Josh Stein (D-NC) was critical of the ruling. He tweeted: "The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that certain active duty military voters serving our nation must jump through hoops that other voters don't. All voters have a constitutional right to be treated equally under the law—it is foundational to our democracy. It's unconscionable, and this decision cannot stand." (V)