The Ballad of Allison Riggs

If it ain't broke . . .

Yes, Justice Allison Riggs is back in the news. The saga of her election and subsequent battle to retain her seat is starting to take on mythic proportions – with some regrettable similarities to the travails of St. Joan of Arc.

You’ll recall, perhaps, that Riggs is a North Carolina State Supreme Court Justice who was duly re-elected to her role by some 734 votes out of five million cast (after the general election and two recounts). A squeaker to be sure, but fair and square, according to the State Board of Elections. They dismissed her opponent’s challenges.

This did not sit well with that opponent, Republican North Carolina Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin. He immediately appealed, citing some 60,000 voters whose registrations might contain irregularities, such as lacking a Social Security or Driver’s License number. Note that Griffin has identified Riggs’ own parents as being among those thousands of voters he’s challenging. Also Note: Ahead of this election, Griffin’s own party jammed through legislation that requires all NC voters to produce ID at the polls, seemingly rendering his concerns moot.

Campaign photos/WUNC Composite

Griffin is also unhappy that missionaries and military service members – who may never have lived here – are allowed to file absentee ballots in the Tar Heel state from overseas because this is where their family lives (consistent with federal law). Griffin appealed to the NC Supreme Court, but the Board of Elections deemed the questions he raised to implicate federal law (including HAVA, the “Help America Vote Act”) so they forwarded the matter to Judge E. Richard Myers II of the Eastern District of the U.S. Federal Court.

There’s some legal wrangling here that I’ll that spare you, but suffice to say that the state statutory identification requirements align with Federal voting requirements. That is, under the Supremacy Clause, if it meets federal requirements, the state law is presumably lawful.

Nevertheless. We’ve met Judge Myers II before. He’s a Trump appointee who has no use for Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment (not clear on how he feels about the rest of that amendment, but see: Trump appointee, above, plus Federalist Society, NRA, etc.). In brief, Section 3 says that if you took an oath swearing fealty to the U.S. Constitution, and later engaged in sedition or insurrection in violation of that oath, you could not hold public office any more. For whatever reason. Democrats love this doctrine, but not so much the Republicans. Judge Myers II didn’t care for it, and when he faced Madison Cawthorn, charged with violating Section 3, he promptly declared that section 3 no longer applies because of the Congressional Amnesty Act of 1872. Apparently, he believes that the amnesty of 1872 applies in perpetuity to all future rebellions. On appeal, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit disagreed and reversed his ruling. Unfortunately, Cawthorn failed in his reelection bid, and the case was discharged as moot.

You can guess where we’re going with this.

Yesterday evening, Judge Myers II concluded that all of Griffin’s challenges were primarily issues of state law, and punted the case back to North Carolina. Griffin, who did not seek a trial in this matter – because he has no evidence, according to Riggs – wants the matter heard by the North Carolina Supreme Court. As we all know, and as we will be discussing ad nauseum in coming episodes of ONSN, the enshittification of North Carolina is characterized, among other things, by the absence of check and balance between the Legislature and the Judiciary – to wit: An Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court is the son of the Senior Senator in the State House. Both bodies are super-majority Republican (FP-NC), with only two Democrats among the seven Supreme Court Justices. One of those two is Allison Riggs, and she’s recused from hearing the case.

I cannot find a bookie stupid enough to give me odds on how the Court will rule.

All is not quite lost, however. With any luck the Board of Elections will take one more stab at things and appeal Myers II’s ruling to the Appeals Court for the Fourth District, and in doing so continue this farce ad infinitum. What the hell; it’s worked before. Hang in there, Allison.