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The Trump Justice Department Barges Into North Carolina Elections -- The American Prospect
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-05-29-trump-justice-department-north-carolina-election-voting-rights/Gabrielle Gurley
A Republican candidate failed to overturn a state supreme court election. But the federal government has picked up where that case left off.
The Department of Justice has touched down in North Carolina—again. On Tuesday, in a bid to satisfy the Trump administration’s preoccupations with virtually nonexistent voter fraud, DOJ officials demanded that North Carolina comply with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), supposedly to ensure that all voter records are accurate.
The action comes weeks after the Republican candidate in the 2024 North Carolina state supreme court race lost by 734 votes. That candidate, Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state appeals court, had previously alleged in a lawsuit against his opponent Allison Riggs that the registration records of more than 60,000 voters—mysteriously concentrated among Democratic demographics—failed to include identifying numbers, either the last four digits of a voter Social Security number or a driver’s license number, and they should therefore be excluded from the final vote count, along with certain military and overseas voters and “never residents.”
There was just one catch: Listing one of those numbers on a voter registration application had been optional long before November. In effect, Griffin was attempting to change the election rules after the fact. A federal district court judge declined to throw out the votes of people who were compliant with state law when they registered to vote. Griffin eventually dropped his lawsuit earlier this month. “What Griffin was asking for was astonishing, totally unprecedented, and completely unlawful,” says Eliza Sweren-Becker, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s voting rights and elections program.
The federal government’s complaint essentially picks up where Griffin v. Riggs left off, arguing that “a significant number of voter registration records in its statewide voter registration list” lack the correct identifying numbers, and gives the state 30 days to clean up voter rolls. The DOJ notes that the state board of elections’ general counsel admitted that the agency was aware of the issue and had been “working on this for quite a while.”
Given that these voters were compliant and that the state made the mistakes, the voters should not encounter future problems voting—should being the operative word. But a judge could make a different determination.
“If a court were to agree with the claims that DOJ has raised, 30 days is not sufficient for voters to receive notice and to remedy any of the purported defects that DOJ alleges,” says Sweren-Becker. Which would be a major upheaval in a state that’s seen more than its fair share of voting irregularities and racial discrimination.
. . .
The action comes weeks after the Republican candidate in the 2024 North Carolina state supreme court race lost by 734 votes. That candidate, Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state appeals court, had previously alleged in a lawsuit against his opponent Allison Riggs that the registration records of more than 60,000 voters—mysteriously concentrated among Democratic demographics—failed to include identifying numbers, either the last four digits of a voter Social Security number or a driver’s license number, and they should therefore be excluded from the final vote count, along with certain military and overseas voters and “never residents.”
There was just one catch: Listing one of those numbers on a voter registration application had been optional long before November. In effect, Griffin was attempting to change the election rules after the fact. A federal district court judge declined to throw out the votes of people who were compliant with state law when they registered to vote. Griffin eventually dropped his lawsuit earlier this month. “What Griffin was asking for was astonishing, totally unprecedented, and completely unlawful,” says Eliza Sweren-Becker, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s voting rights and elections program.
The federal government’s complaint essentially picks up where Griffin v. Riggs left off, arguing that “a significant number of voter registration records in its statewide voter registration list” lack the correct identifying numbers, and gives the state 30 days to clean up voter rolls. The DOJ notes that the state board of elections’ general counsel admitted that the agency was aware of the issue and had been “working on this for quite a while.”
Given that these voters were compliant and that the state made the mistakes, the voters should not encounter future problems voting—should being the operative word. But a judge could make a different determination.
“If a court were to agree with the claims that DOJ has raised, 30 days is not sufficient for voters to receive notice and to remedy any of the purported defects that DOJ alleges,” says Sweren-Becker. Which would be a major upheaval in a state that’s seen more than its fair share of voting irregularities and racial discrimination.
. . .