US Appeals Court Halts Ballot Curing Efforts in North Carolina Supreme Court Election

The court ruled 2–1 to pause the latest efforts in the long-running election dispute.

Absentee ballots in Raleigh, N.C., in an undated file photo. Allison Joyce/Getty Images

A U.S. appeals court this week temporarily blocked North Carolina state elections officials from contacting voters whose ballots were disputed in 2024’s state Supreme Court race and could be eliminated from the final vote count.

In a 2–1 ruling issued on April 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit paused state officials’ efforts in mailing out notices to overseas and military voters.

The notices would have given the voters 30 days to “cure”—the process of fixing absentee ballot errors—the deficiencies in their ballots.

“In furtherance of federal jurisdiction, we enjoin the North Carolina State Board of Elections from mailing any notice to any potentially affected voter pending the district court’s resolution of Riggs’ motion for a preliminary injunction,” the order said, in part.

The April 22 order grants an emergency request from state Supreme Court Associate Justice Allison Riggs, who has asked federal judges to throw out the recent rulings of state appellate courts in the case. Republican opponent Jefferson Griffin has submitted court motions to toss ballots that he says were cast in violation of state law.

The federal appeals court’s decision late on April 22 means government election workers are temporarily prohibited from carrying out a process mandated by state judges who ruled earlier in April that two categories of voters were ineligible.

Most of the military or overseas voters would get 30 days to provide additional identifying information so that their votes would remain in the tally. Others, however, would be unable to “cure” their ineligibility, and their ballots would be removed.

The decision also reverses U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II’s order earlier in April that denied Griffin’s request for a stay. He also instructed Board of Elections officials to be prepared to send out notices after the North Carolina Supreme Court provided instructions to inform overseas and military absentee voters.

The April 22 order stipulated that granting a stay in the case was proper, to allow time for Myers to rule on arguments by Riggs, the State Board of Elections, and others in the case.

On April 11, the state Supreme Court, in a 4–2 ruling, ordered that the Board of Elections officials must count upward of 60,000 votes from people who have been registered since 2004 but for whom the state board of elections has no record of the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, driver’s license, or ID numbers.

The highest state court, meanwhile, faulted the board of elections for not making sure the voters had presented the numbers and for “inattention and failure to dutifully conform its conduct to the law’s requirements.”

“Because the responsibility for the technical defects in the voters’ registrations rests with the Board and not the voters, the wholesale voiding of ballots cast by individuals who subsequently proved their identity to the Board by complying with the voter identification law would undermine the principle that ‘this is a government of the people, in which the will of the people—the majority—legally expressed, must govern,'” it said.

The order further stated that no evidence was presented to indicate that a “significant number of the roughly 60,000 ballots in the first category were cast by individuals whose identity was not verified by voter identification or who were not otherwise qualified to vote.”

In early April, a state appeals court ruled that the state must provide voters with 15 days to resolve their ballots, but the Supreme Court’s order instead gave them 30 days.

Separately, the North Carolina State Board of Elections said in a court filing on April 15 that 1,409 ballots from military and overseas voters from Guilford County could be challenged. It said that challenges in other counties are invalid, arguing that Griffin failed to meet deadlines for submitting them.

Riggs campaign spokesperson Dory MacMillan told media outlets on April 23 that the appeals court decision temporarily blocks a “confusing and burdensome cure process for ballots that had nothing wrong with them,” while Griffin campaign spokesperson Paul Shumaker said that the campaign expects “litigation of this case to continue for some time” and that the appeals court ruling will further delay the outcome.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.