A few weeks ago, I began receiving frantic texts from friends asking if their ballots — ones they cast two months ago — were successfully counted. I checked my Instagram and saw stories of people who had lived in North Carolina their entire lives and even voted in previous elections, whose votes were in jeopardy of being discarded.
If you’re unaware, although it’s been 89 days since Election Day, one North Carolina judicial candidate — and incoming Duke Law student — still can’t accept defeat. Jefferson Griffin, a candidate who lost by 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast in the state Supreme Court election, has gone through every possible legal means to avoid admitting he didn’t win. First, he asked for two recounts, which only widened his opponent’s lead over him. Then, he brought his case to the Board of Elections, which was promptly dismissed. Now, he is challenging around 65,000 votes in court, desperately trying to overturn the results of a democratically-decided election.
Griffin isn’t challenging these votes indiscriminately. Youth voters are more than 3.4 times more likely to have their votes included in the lawsuit than those aged 65+, and in Durham, that number skyrockets to seven times more likely. That means that Duke students are disproportionally affected by this challenge — on our campus alone, the lawsuit names 750 students. Ironically, on a college campus like Duke, voting and voter registration resources are far more accessible. Having worked with Duke Votes, I remember how carefully each student filled out their registration form, some even multiple times — it’s hard to imagine that 750 students at Duke cast completely invalid ballots.
The potential disenfranchisement of a significant portion of Duke voters has unique effects: Political engagement is imbued into our campus culture and many students plan to enter political fields after graduation. Just this year, 11 Duke community members were on national or local ballots. Devastating students’ ability to engage in the electoral system could dissuade their future interest in politics, especially for the students of color that Griffin was more likely to name.
However, none of these attempts to overturn pluralistic democracy are new, nationally or statewide, or even from Duke students — after all, we’re the alma mater of white nationalists Stephen Miller and Richard Spencer. In November, the Arizona Supreme Court rejected Kari Lake’s seventh, yes, seventh, bid to overturn the 2022 Senate Election Results. In 2021, 147 congressional Republicans voted against certifying the presidential election.
If this case seems both particularly extreme and frighteningly likely to succeed, that’s because it is. The North Carolina Supreme Court, which temporarily blocked the election from being certified, is stacked with a conservative majority and appears likely to uphold Jefferson’s false claims. Beyond devastating any legitimacy in our system and creating a long-lasting imbalance in the North Carolina Supreme Court, such a decision would set a dangerous precedent nationally. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time North Carolina has served as a testing ground for far-right policies.
The Republican strategy in North Carolina is tried and true: Introduce an unpopular and extreme policy, deal with the backlash until it subsides and then incorporate the policy on a national scale. Pass the bill, weather the storm and watch as the policy catches fire.
In 2016, for example, North Carolina lawmakers passed the controversial “bathroom bill,” also known as HB2, which forced people to use bathrooms based on their gender assigned at birth. The backlash was swift and intense — PayPal canceled a significant expansion, the NCAA canceled its tournament games and performers like Bruce Springsteen boycotted the state. One estimate declared that North Carolina would lose $3.76 billion over a dozen years as a direct result of the law.
Even though, over a year later, the legislature ended up repealing part of the law, the bill began a national push to restrict the rights of transgender Americans. North Carolina strategists convinced other states to rally around the issue — and as we now know, the question of trans athletes in sports has caught fire nationally. The issue that once caused such dramatic backlash, the bathroom bill, has been adopted in some form in eleven states.
The same thing is happening right now with gubernatorial powers. Since 2017, a Democrat has held the North Carolina governor’s office, but Republicans have held a convincing majority, or even supermajority, in the state legislature. In 2016, just before the Democrat took office, Republicans rushed through restrictions on the governor’s powers, removing his ability to appoint certain positions on courts and boards and cutting his workforce by two-thirds.
Just weeks ago, before losing their supermajority, they took their efforts to a new level. I implore you to read the whole list, but for a few highlights — or maybe lowlights:
- The law takes away the governor’s power to appoint any member of the Board of Elections, putting every member of the board into the hands of Republicans for the foreseeable future.
- It requires the governor to choose certain judicial appointees based on a list provided by the person vacating their seat — meaning that if a Republican leaves, a Republican would have to be appointed.
- It bars the Attorney General from taking any stances in lawsuits that contradict the official position of the legislature.
While not at the scale of HB2, the law received substantial backlash for contravening the balance of power of the executive and legislative branches and hiding the power grab in a bill that nominally aided Appalachia. However, that hasn’t stopped the spread of their political ruthlessness. In 2016, states such as Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Wisconsin mimicked the legislature’s policy, to varying degrees. The State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin concluded that this recent power grab could inspire the same type of extreme tactics nationwide.
Over and over, the North Carolina Republican strategy is the same: pass, weather, watch.
So what can we do? First, we can check that our ballots are not named in Griffin’s lawsuit. If you voted absentee or early in North Carolina, use this list to search for your name and ensure that your vote is not in danger of being discarded. If it is, your best course of action is to contact the Board of Elections and check if they need additional information or if there’s any way to remedy your ballot. In a race decided by a margin of hundreds of ballots, your challenge could quite literally be the difference.
Second, we shouldn’t let one power grab fly under the radar simply because Griffin’s election challenge is a more public threat to North Carolina’s democracy. After all, however unlikely they might succeed, the governor’s and attorney general’s offices are currently suing to block the legislature’s recent restriction of executive powers.
Additionally, as pessimistic as this article might sound, the previous actions of the legislature also produced incredibly significant grassroots movements. HB2 strengthened the queer rights movement that passed numerous non-discrimination ordinances across North Carolina. The Moral Monday civil disobedience movement — an alliance of progressive faith leaders and activists founded in 2013 to combat the legislature’s policies — brought thousands of protestors to the legislature and is restarting its mobilization efforts now. We are currently in the weather stage of the strategy. Do your civic duty and check your vote, but do the right thing and don’t let the storm pass.
Adam Levin is a Trinity first-year. His pieces typically run on alternate Thursdays.
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