Residents Rally to Protest Jefferson Griffin Election Challenge
'The People vs. Griffin' rallies scheduled across North Carolina
Around 400 people marched from Marshall Park to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center Monday afternoon to protest NC Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s ongoing demand to throw out more than 60,000 legal votes and overturn the November election won by incumbent Justice Allison Riggs.
The rally and march in Uptown was one of dozens of similar rallies, dubbed “The People v. Griffin,” held across North Carolina over the weekend and scheduled through this week as Griffin’s challenge has now extended past 100 days despite multiple confirmations of Riggs’ win.
Although two recounts confirmed Riggs’ 734-vote lead, Griffin’s challenge targets voters that he said did not include a Social Security or driver’s license number with their registration records as well as members of the military and overseas citizens who did not provide photo ID with their absentee votes because they were not required by state law to do so.
A Wake County Superior Court judge rejected Jefferson Griffin’s request to throw out the votes on Feb. 7, validating the Democratic-led NC Board of Elections’ (BOE) December decision to dismiss Griffin’s protests.
Common Cause North Carolina held the Monday protest along with several other nonpartisan organizations like Mecklenburg NAACP, Democracy NC, NC Poor People’s Campaign, Democracy Out Loud and other organizations to spread awareness and urge voters to fight back against Griffin.
“Judge Griffin, you’re not just out of order with the people, you’re not just out of order with the courts, you’re not just out of order with the truth, you are out of order with God,” said Rev. Rodney Sadler with the NC Poor People’s Campaign. “Because God said, ‘Thou shall not steal.’”
Rotrina Campbell, redistricting organizer with Common Cause NC, outlined the three main reasons North Carolinians should care about Griffin’s challenge: the stakes, the precedent and the impact.
Griffin is vying for a seat that makes crucial decisions about North Carolinians’ lives and affects our generations to come, Campbell said, and if he succeeds in stealing the election, what’s stopping others from doing the same after every close election?
Campbell called Griffin’s challenges “an attack on the precedent of voting.”
Griffin’s challenges are also an insult to voters and the independent judiciary they voted for, said Campbell, as his list of contested ballots disproportionately impacts Black, Latinx and Asian American voters. Young voters, including student voters, are also overrepresented on Griffin’s target list.
Campbell and others asked that the NC Supreme Court approve the NC Board of Elections’ request, made last week, to expedite things by skipping over the Court of Appeals and taking the case on itself.
In the meantime, organizations across the state will continue to hold The People v. Griffin rallies through Feb. 22.
