The power to steal an election

The Court of Appeals is writing and passing laws from the bench, bypassing the legislature and governor.

It’s really hard for me to get my head around what’s happening in the Supreme Court race in North Carolina. The Court of Appeals decision to side with Jefferson Griffin is clearly anti-democratic and anti-voter. It applies the law unequally and it penalizes voters who did everything they were told to do by the Republican-controlled legislature and the people overseeing the election. It blatantly negates the will of the people.

Griffin and the Republican Party cherry-picked voters to challenge. They chose voters whose profile overwhelming suggested they voted Democratic despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of additional voters had the same issue with their voter registrations. The court agreed to only consider the ballots challenged instead of looking at all voters equally.

The court is disenfranchising three sets of voters who followed the law and the rules as they stood on Election Day. Most of those voters’ registration forms lacked either the last four digits of their social security number or their drivers license number. They were all voters who voted early, either in-person or by mail. They all showed voter IDs to confirm their identities and eligibility to vote. They were confirmed to be on voter rolls and their ballots were deemed valid by their local Boards of Elections. Many, if not most, of those voters have voted in numerous elections with the same missing information on their voter registration forms. They’ve never been challenged before.

In an insult to the our soldiers and sailors, the Court voted to disenfranchise service members. The North Carolina legislature said that military personnel who were stationed overseas did not need to provide a photo ID. The State Board of Elections accepted their ballots under the laws passed by the GOP. Griffin and the GOP claimed the law was invalid and that their votes should be tossed.

The court also tossed the ballots of more than 200 American citizens who were born and lived overseas all of their lives. According the Federal Voting Assistance Program, they were eligible to vote in North Carolina if that’s where their parents last voted. Several people had been voting in the state for years. They have no appeal or cannot cure their ballots. They are disenfranchised.

The court literally changed the rules of the election after the fact. That’s the very definition of an activist Court. They are clearly not interested in fairness. They are interested in winning.

They have treated the contested voters unfairly, holding them to a different standard than all other voters in the state. In the case of the military ballots and expats, they created laws out of whole cloth. They are serving as legislature and governor, writing and passing unwritten bills and signing them into law to take effect retroactively. That’s an unimaginable amount of power.

In trying to sound magnanimous instead of authoritarian and anti-democratic, the Court of Appeals said the victims of their ruling have 15 days to cure their ballots. The Supreme Court has stayed their order, so voters have even more time. Let’s get on it.

According the Cardinal & Pine, here’s how to cure your ballot. Find out if you’re on it or know people who are. Reach out to your neighbors. Get these ballots cured. Never surrender to authoritarians.

Here’s how to find out if you’re on that list, and how to fix your ballot ASAP if you’re one of the 60,000 or so voters who Griffin is challenging because the state lacks information such as a driver’s license number or a Social Security number.

1. Search the list at https://thegriffinlist.com/ to find out if you’re on it.

2. If you are, you need to provide updated information to your county board of elections ASAP. Don’t wait to to do it.

3. If you have a driver’s license, you can update that info quickly by filling out a new voter registration form at payments.ncdot.gov. Since you’re already registered, filling this out will update your info. Republicans are targeting people who haven’t provided a driver’s license or Social Security number, so make sure to include that.

4. If you don’t have a driver’s license, go to ncsbe.gov/registering. Print out a voter registration form. Fill it out and submit it ASAP to your local board of elections. Find your local board’s address and contact info at this link — https://vt.ncsbe.gov/BOEInfo/