Linda Berkeley, a registered voter in Buncombe County, North Carolina, moved to England decades ago and has cast a ballot from overseas in every U.S. election since the mid-1980s. She did so without any issues until the 2024 election. Earlier this month, she learned that her vote in the race for a seat on the state supreme court could be rejected.
“I am enraged that anyone wants to disenfranchise me,” Berkeley said.
She is one of more than 60,000 voters whose ballot is in doubt after Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for the North Carolina Supreme Court whom she voted for, contested the outcome of his race in an extraordinary attempt to change the rules after the election. Griffin’s effort, if successful, would create chaos for future elections, inviting candidates to bring similar post-election lawsuits, exposing American democracy to a further erosion of trust.
“I voted for Jefferson Griffin. I resent that Judge Griffin is trying to change the rules after the election,” Berkeley said. “You cannot move the goal post after the game has started.”
Last week, the Brennan Center for Justice and Ballew Puryear PLLC filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Griffin v. North Carolina State Board of Elections on behalf of the U.S. Vote Foundation, the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, and six impacted voters, including Berkeley.
The legal quarrel began after Allison Riggs, a Democratic justice on the state’s high court, defeated Griffin by 734 votes. That outcome was confirmed by two separate recounts. But two weeks after the election, Griffin filed numerous legal challenges seeking to invalidate more than 60,000 ballots. Among the votes that he seeks to nullify are those cast by military and overseas voters who did not provide a copy of a photo ID with their ballots and by children and dependents of North Carolinians who were born abroad — even the though the law expressly allows them to vote just as they did.
In his case, Griffin is not asserting that voter fraud influenced the election, nor is he refuting that the voters followed the rules. Yet he is seeking to disenfranchise eligible American voters. The election rules at issue were in place long before the 2024 general election, and he is challenging ballots cast by military and overseas voters only in a handful of counties — Buncombe, Durham, Forsyth, and Guilford counties — all of which are heavily Democratic.
“Why now,” asked Nikita Berry, an overseas voter since 2016 living in Calgary, Canada, who is registered in Forsyth County and signed onto the brief along with Berkeley. “I have been voting absentee for over a decade. My local board of elections sent a detailed list of everything I needed to do and I did that — I have never had an issue before.”
Riggs (the Democratic candidate) and the bipartisan state board of elections contend that these ballots were cast by eligible voters who followed the voting process as it was laid out for them at the time of the election.
In December, the state board of elections dismissed Griffin’s challenges. After the case bounced between state and federal courts, a state trial court affirmed the board’s decision. Griffin appealed that ruling to the state’s court of appeals, where it is now pending. Meanwhile, the North Carolina Supreme Court halted the state board of elections from certifying the result as Griffin’s bid makes its way through the courts — making this the only race from the November 2024 election that has yet to be certified.
As the brief explains, Griffin’s legal dispute is at odds with longstanding legal precedent and commonsense: when voters follow the established rules at the time of an election, their votes must be counted. The implications of this kind of post-election contest, if the courts allow it, would be jarring.
This goes beyond one election for one seat on a state’s high court. Judicial approval of Griffin’s suit would encourage more candidates to wait until after they have lost elections to raise legal challenges, so that they can selectively disqualify groups of ballots that do not skew in their favor. Enabling future dubious lawsuits in other states risks weakening the constitutional right to vote and shakes the foundations of the democratic process.
“This experience has undermined my trust in our judicial system and the integrity of our elections. My vote should not be thrown out,” said Karen Brightwell, one of the voters who signed onto the brief, who lives in New Zealand and is registered to vote in Durham County. “I worry that our democracy is in serious trouble.”
As with Berkeley and Berry, Brightwell only learned her vote was being challenged in early February through an email from the U.S. Vote Foundation, an organization that provides voter assistance to eligible voters who live overseas or serve in the military.
For these voters, electing candidates that affect every aspect of their home state and the lives of their family and friends is part of being an American, even from abroad. And their voices matter.
“My father dedicated his life to defending our Constitution as part of his military service,” Brightwell said. “I vote in North Carolina because I firmly believe that it is not only my right but my obligation as a citizen of this state and nation.”
