The ballots cast by 1,576 Buncombe County voters in the Nov. 5 election could be nullified if Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin succeeds in challenging his razor-thin loss to incumbent Associate Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat. 

The Buncombe County ballots make up a small fraction of the 60,000 ballots cast by voters across North Carolina that Griffin seeks to erase from the 5.5 million votes counted in that race.  His goal is to flip the results by persuading the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court to call for a recount of the balloting minus those targeted voters, or to order a new election. 

According to numerous analyses of the targeted voters, a lawsuit filed by Griffin could disqualify a disproportionate number of voters who historically favor Democratic candidates, especially those age 25 and younger. 

The lawsuit also disproportionately targets Buncombe County’s Democratic voters by disqualifying the ballots of three times as many registered Democrats as registered Republicans. That impact goes beyond the Democratic Party’s long-existing, though narrower, edge over Republicans in the county.

Griffin’s lawsuit does not identify a single fraudulent ballot among the 60,000 he’s contesting, a point emphasized by opponents and contrary to the basis for most disputed elections.  

Instead, the Republican’s challenge alleges that clerical flaws on the targeted voters’ registration records are sufficient to disqualify the ballots despite the fact that the voters played no role in these alleged mistakes. 

“This is norm breaking,” said Western Carolina University professor Chris Cooper, an expert on North Carolina elections. “Calling for recounts in close elections is normal.  But this is much different.  

“Norm-breaking doesn’t begin to describe this.” 

Several Buncombe County voters targeted in the lawsuit responded with a mix of confusion about how they allegedly violated election law, and anger over the prospect of having their votes nullified.    

“I don’t think there could be anything I did that would make my ballot illegitimate,” said Esther Holsen of West Asheville, a North Carolina resident since 1992 who has been voting since 1976. 

“But I’m not so much shocked as I am annoyed because, at this point, just about anything can happen in politics,” said Holsen, a Democrat.

John Nicolay, a self-described independent voter who said he prefers to choose candidates based on merit rather than party affiliation, told The Watchdog that he is beyond annoyed. 

“If my ballot is tossed, I will have a big problem [with being targeted] because someone just negated my right to vote,” he said.  “Forget what party you’re in, I don’t buy that.” 

Anthony Turco and his wife Sally Turco, Republicans who live in Weaverville, learned they were on the targeted list when Anthony was contacted by The Watchdog. He said the couple registered to vote together at the county elections department in 2011 and provided all the information requested and showed proper photo identification when they participated in early voting.

“I don’t have any idea about what this could be about,” Turco said. 

Of the more than 5.5 million ballots cast in the state Supreme Court race, Riggs prevailed by 734 votes. Despite two recounts and reviews by a county and the state Board of Elections, Griffin failed to close the gap.  

But he refused to concede defeat, choosing instead to file the lawsuit seeking a court-ordered recount of the reshaped electorate minus the targeted voters or – in a hail-Mary move – persuading the state Supreme Court to call a new special election.

In both cases, Griffin’s goal is to reverse the election outcome and boot Riggs from the Supreme Court. The Court accepted jurisdiction in the case and held a preliminary hearing earlier this month, putting itself in the unprecedented position of interfering in a campaign to choose a colleague. 

Five of the Supreme Court’s seven members are Republicans and, because Riggs has recused herself from the case, the Republicans will hold a 5-1 majority when considering Griffin’s challenge. 

The case has drawn the attention of critics across the country, including Democrats who say Riggs could be the victim of judicial gerrymandering. The mantra “stop the steal” is being applied by Riggs supporters in a twist of that phrase coinedby Donald Trump supporters after he lost the 2020 presidential election. 

At the core of the criticism is Griffin’s mass targeting of more than 60,000 voters based on these voters’ alleged failures to record driver’s license or Social Security numbers on their electronic registrations. Griffin also targeted only those voters who participated in early voting, apparently because their ballots could be readily obtained and cross-tabulated against the other criteria.      

Complicating the case is the fact that if Griffin’s lawsuit succeeds, it will also impact other state and county races in which the targeted voters cast ballots, possibly reversing the result in some. 

Cooper, the political analyst, said the prospect of creating cascading chaos in countless other races to satisfy Griffin may prove too daunting for even a Republican majority on the Court. 

A more likely outcome, he said, would be for the Supreme Court to throw out the entire results of the Griffin-Riggs race and order a special election.  

“The court might say, ‘We can’t simply take away these people’s ballots when some of them may have done the right thing,’ but,” Cooper continued, “there was an administrative hiccup somewhere, so therefore they’ll call for a brand new election.” 

The Griffin campaign didn’t respond to written questions from The Watchdog seeking an explanation for the mass-targeting tactic and whether Griffin had concerns about a voter backlash. Matt Mercer, the state GOP’s communications director, has defended the tactic saying that discrepancies in the voter data files were brought to the state Board of Elections’ attention two years ago and no action was taken.    

Whether the campaign developed an algorithm to target voters more likely to back the Democratic candidate still remains a puzzle for election analysts. Among the 60,000 challenged voters are many registered in both major parties, as well as those independents registered as unaffiliated. 

But deliberate or not, there is evidence that the targeted group leans more toward Democratic candidates than the state’s electorate as a whole. An analysis by the Raleigh News & Observer found that voters between ages 18 and 25 are disproportionately included. 

These young voters make up 23 percent of the challenged group, although they are just 12 percent of the electorate. Cooper said this group historically favors Democrats over Republicans.

A Watchdog analysis of the 1,576 Buncombe County voters found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the targeted group by a ratio of nearly three to one, although Democrats’ edge is just three to two among all Buncombe County voters.  

With rare exceptions, these voters shared the fact that they cast their ballots in person during the early voting period, and their original county voter-registration record lacked driver’s license numbers. 

The law, which took effect in 2004, doesn’t require a voter to have a driver’s license and allows several alternative forms of identification such as government-issued IDs, passports and birth certificates. A new state law that took effect in 2024 requires a voter to show an authorized ID when casting a ballot during in-person voting.  

Cooper said he doubts the Griffin campaign developed an algorithm to scan the 2024 ballots with the intention of cherry-picking those most likely cast for his opponent and increasing his chances of reversing the outcome. Rather they saw the records’ discrepancies as a way to legitimize a lawsuit. 

“Griffin needed to find a legal horse he could ride to get into court,” Cooper said. “It’s as simple as that.” 

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Tom Fiedler is a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter and dean emeritus from Boston University who lives in Asheville. Email him at tfiedler@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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