ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The nation’s last contested race from the November election has been decided … sort of.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard E. Myers II, a Trump appointee to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, on Monday ordered the North Carolina Board of Elections to certify results in the North Carolina Supreme Court race.
North Carolina Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin trailed Associate Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes after two recounts. Since then, he has filed hundreds of election protests across the state’s 100 counties.
In a 68-page ruling, Myers said the North Carolina Board of Elections should certify results without instituting a cure process or removing any ballots from the count.
“This case concerns whether the federal Constitution permits a state to alter the rules of an election after the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a select group of voters, and in so doing, treat those voters differently than other similarly situated individuals,” Myers wrote in his decision. “This case is also about whether a state may redefine its class of eligible voters but offer no process to those who may have been misclassified as ineligible. To this court, the answer to each of those questions is ‘no.'”
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Myers directed the state Board of Elections to certify the results of the election without instituting a cure process or removing any ballots from the count.
“You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” he wrote. “This consolidated action concerns an attempt to change the rules of the game after it had been played.”
The North Carolina Democratic Party took to social media to celebrate the apparent win.
“This moment belongs to all of us — to every voter who deserves confidence that their voice will be heard when they cast a ballot, to every military voter who spoke out when their rights were under attack, to every North Carolinian who would not stand idly by and watch Republicans dismantle democracy, and to our champion, Justice Allison Riggs,” the Facebook post said.
However, the case isn’t over. Myers is allowing Griffin time to file an appeal before the state Board of Elections certifies the results.
Gov. Josh Stein urged Griffin to concede and “end this travesty.”
“A federal district court just ordered the certification of the NC Supreme Court election, reaffirming what we already knew — Allison Riggs won. You can’t change the rules of an election after it has occurred,” Stein said in a Facebook post.