Mother Jones reports:

In early January, the Republican majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court blocked the State Board of Elections from certifying the victory of Democratic Justice Allison Riggs after she led by 734 votes following two recounts. Riggs’ Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin, had asked the court to overturn the election by throwing out more than 60,000 ballots.

On Thursday, the court rejected Griffin’s extraordinary request to appoint him the winner—for now—and sent the case back to the lower courts for a full trial. The court continued to block the state board from certifying the election; it is now the last uncertified race in the country. Worse, three of the court’s Republican justices expressed full-throated support for overturning the election—a stunning outcome that would have major ramifications for free and fair elections across the country.

“On the night of the election, petitioner led his opponent by almost 10,000 votes,” wrote Chief Justice Paul Newby, whom Griffin, a state appeals judge, has called his “good friend and mentor.” “Over the course of the next several days, his lead slowly dwindled, and he now trails his opponent by 734 votes out of the 5,540,090 total votes cast. That is a highly unusual course of events. It is understandable that petitioner and many North Carolina voters are questioning how this could happen.”

Newby’s rhetoric echoes President Donald Trump’s debunked claims about the 2020 election, when he led on election night in key swing states but his advantage steadily shrunk after mail ballots were counted. There was nothing nefarious about this in 2020—that’s just how vote counting worked—but the Trump campaign cited his disappearing lead as the basis for alleging a vast conspiracy to rig the vote.

There’s also a simple explanation for Riggs’ lead: She gained ground after absentee and provisional ballots were counted, in accordance with North Carolina law. But instead of accepting that outcome, her Republican opponent and his allies on the bench are following Trump’s 2020 Big Lie playbook, using claims of widespread voter fraud to build support for overturning an election. The key difference is this time, Republicans might actually succeed—changing the rules for an election that has already occurred. [Continue reading…]