NC Republicans who lost in November turn to voter disenfranchisement in hopes of overturning the will of the people

At the same time that state Senate Republicans are using Hurricane Helene relief to try to change election laws to cut back on the amount of time that ballots can be counted and issues can be fixed, multiple GOP candidates are refusing to concede races they lost.

Republican House candidate Frank Sossamon trails Democrat Bryan Cohn by 228 votes after a machine recount in the race for a seat covering Granville and Vance counties. He has not conceded.

Republican state Senate candidate Ashlee Bryan Adams trails Democratic Rep. Terence Everitt by 128 votes in their contest for a Senate seat representing parts of Granville and Wake counties. Adams has not conceded.

Republican state Senate candidate Stacie McGinn has filed election protests and requested recounts in her race for a seat covering part of Mecklenburg County. She is trailing Democrat Woodson Bradley by 209 votes after a machine recount. McGinn has not conceded.

The biggest hypocrite, though, is far-right Republican Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin. Out of more than 5.5 million votes cast, Democratic incumbent Associate Justice Allison Riggs finished 734 votes ahead of Griffin. A machine recount confirmed that margin earlier this week.

Close judicial elections are nothing new here in North Carolina. It was only back in 2020 that a seat on the state’s high court came down to several hundred votes. Then-Chief Justice Cheri Beasley lost her race to Paul Newby by just 401 votes – out of more than four million cast – following a recount. Beasley gracefully conceded following the first recount. 

Unfortunately, “graceful” and “concede” no longer seem to be words understood by Republicans in the Trump era. Griffin and the other Republicans who lost their races are refusing to concede and have instead gone back to their old playbook of trying to harass, intimidate and disenfranchise people as they attempt to change the rules to overturn the will of the voters. Griffin is now challenging the validity of more than 60,000 ballots – including two cast by Riggs’s parents.

Candidates have the right to call for a recount and recounts are a healthy part of our electoral process because, after all, what’s more important than affirming the decisions voters made? A complete recount of ballots cast in all 100 counties confirmed that Riggs won by 734 votes. What Griffin is doing now is nothing more than targeted harassment of voters.

The North Carolina Republican Party and the Republican National Committee – outside of Griffin’s ballot challenge – have also filed lawsuits claiming 225,000 voters should be removed from the state’s rolls. A Trump-appointed federal judge dismissed the main part of the lawsuit in October.

What Griffin and the state GOP are doing here is an attempt to disqualify tens of thousands of eligible voters and overturn the results of a legitimate election. This now represents the strategy for state Republicans: when they lose elections, they seek to disenfranchise voters instead of accepting the results.

If your vote has been challenged by Griffin or the GOP, you should have been contacted by the NCSBE. If you are unsure, you can click here to double-check. Once you’ve done that:

• Review the PDFs for your county. The PDF with the most names will be labeled “Incomplete Reg.”
• To quickly search the PDF, use Control + F and type in your last name.

If your vote has been challenged, help us make sure that North Carolinians know your story. Click here to share your story and we will work with you to amplify it.