Supreme Court candidate Griffin moves to disqualify election board member, delaying protest hearing

Republican North Carolina Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin on Tuesday filed a last-minute motion to disqualify a State Board of Elections member from hearing his protest to thousands of ballots cast in the race.

In the motion, Griffin called on Siobhan Millen, one of three Democrats on the board, to be removed from any discussion of the judicial contest protest, citing her husband Pressly Millen’s position as a partner in Womble Bond Dickinson, a law firm representing Griffin’s Democratic opponent, Associate Justice Allison Riggs.

Board members learned of the challenge — filed just 15 minutes before they convened for the state election canvass Tuesday — during the meeting, causing them to postpone their planned discussion of Griffin’s protest to a later date.

“Obviously, it came so close that no one has had a chance to even review it or respond to it,” said Paul Cox, the state board’s general counsel, during the hearing. “The issue that you would be considering is encompassed within the motion to disqualify.”

Griffin accuses Millen of conflict of interest

In the motion, attorneys for Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, argue that because Millen’s husband represented Riggs in the past and remains a partner of the firm that is handling the justice’s election litigation, she must be disqualified from the hearing on Griffin’s election challenges.

“A reasonable observer would question the objectivity of Ms. Millen, who is the wife of the long-standing leader of Justice Rigg’s [sic] legal team,” counsel for Griffin wrote. “A reasonable observer would also conclude that Ms. Millen stands to benefit financially from this litigation through Mr. Millen’s ownership of a partnership share at Womble.”

Griffin’s attorneys claim that Millen’s husband “held himself out as Justice Riggs’ lead attorney” and only “declined to make an appearance” for Griffin’s election protests. In the motion, they argue that that is insufficient to avoid Millen’s disqualification.

In an interview with NC Newsline, Pressly Millen said much of the motion is “factually incorrect” and the claims of a conflict of interest are unfounded.

“My representation of Justice Riggs was limited to pre-election matters related solely to advertising issues,” he said. “I have not performed any legal work for Justice Riggs since before the election. I have had absolutely no involvement in the firm’s post-election representation of her at the board of elections.”

He added that his firm uses an “ethical screen” to shield him from contact with the attorneys representing Riggs in the election litigation and prevent him from accessing any of the materials in that case — a standard practice at large law firms that he said the attorneys representing Griffin should be well-aware of.

No race in North Carolina’s 2024 elections has been more of a rollercoaster than the state Supreme Court contest. The morning after the election — before the counting of provisional ballots — the board of elections’ unofficial tally showed Griffin with a nearly 10,000 vote leadover Riggs.

But after accounting for the record number of provisional ballots cast this year — with more than 60,000 applications filed — that apparent lead was reversed. Riggs held a 722-vote lead with the last of the county reports on Nov. 20, causing her opponent to request a recount and challenge tens of thousands of ballots, relying largely on theories advanced by the state Republican party that state and federal courts previously rejected.

Certification proceeds as planned

At Tuesday’s meeting, the board unanimously certified the results of the state’s 2024 elections, with the exception of races undergoing recounts.

The certified results show a record number of ballots in North Carolina’s 2024 election, with more than 5.7 million cast this year from over 73% of registered voters. That reflects a slight decrease in turnout from 2020, which saw 75% turnout, though from a smaller voter registration pool.

North Carolina also broke its record for early in-person votes, with more than 4.2 million voters going to the polls prior to election day. Mail-in ballots fell from roughly 1 million in 2020 to just under 300,000 this year, which still reflects an increase of more than 100,000 from 2016, the last pre-pandemic presidential election.

A statewide voter history audit — which compares voter check-ins and absentee ballot applications with the number of physical ballots cast — found no evidence that vote totals or ballots cast were manipulated.

As part of its election security measures, the state board also alerted counties to any instances where a North Carolina ID was linked to multiple votes, where voters whose registration had been removed or denied appeared to cast votes, and where individuals listed as felons or as deceased appeared to cast votes.

Millen commended board of elections executive director Karen Brinson Bell and state election staff for overcoming the challenges presented by Hurricane Helene. Emergency election changes adopted by the board and expanded by the General Assembly greatly increased voting access in the western part of the state to prevent residents from being unable to cast ballots due to the storm.

“The credit goes to definitely the staff and the 100 county boards’ staff members,” Brinson Bell said. “I think they’re all still working, in many cases, 14–16-hour days and have been since the start of early voting to keep this going.”

Recounts hold major implications for balance of power in North Carolina

The state did not yet certify the results of several races still undergoing recounts, including the state Supreme Court race, two races in each chamber of the North Carolina General Assembly, and five close races at the local level.

North Carolina Democrats have identified holding onto Riggs’ seat as a vital step as they seek to win back control of the state Supreme Court — where they currently hold just two of seven seats — ahead of what’s expected to be another highly contentious redistricting fight in 2030. To win a Supreme Court majority, they would need to win at least four contests from a list that includes Riggs’ race, her Democratic colleague Anita Earls’s 2026 election, and three Republican-held seats up for election in 2028.

The Republican-controlled state Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the political makeup of legislative districts in the state is not a matter for the courts amid challenges to partisan gerrymandering that has entrenched large Republican majorities in the General Assembly.

At stake in the recounts is not just the long-term future of the General Assembly, but also its composition come next January.

The four General Assembly races still undecided and for which recounts were requested are Senate Districts 18 and 42 and House Districts 32 and 105. All but the latter House race, where Democrat-turned-Republican Tricia Cotham holds a 206-vote lead over her opponent — showed narrow Democratic wins at the conclusion of the initial tally. All three Democratic wins are the subject of election protests.

The recounts in Cotham’s race and House District 32, where Democrat Bryan Cohn leads by 233 votes in the unofficial tally, will determine whether Republicans maintain their current supermajority in the state House. The GOP would need to prevail in both races to reach a supermajority of 72 representatives. Should Democrats win one or both, the supermajority will be broken.

With 60 counties in and 40 with results outstanding, the recount’s impact on the final tally in the Riggs-Griffin Supreme Court race has been marginal. Riggs’ lead has fallen by about 67 votes, leaving her with a margin that is still above 600.

Should Griffin’s protest fail, it is unlikely the recount will change the outcome of the race — the nonpartisan election advocacy group FairVote found that since 2000, just three statewide recounts have reversed election outcomes, all with a margin of less than 300 votes. Recounts generally widen the gap between candidates rather than reducing it.