The MeidasTouch Podcast
Major Update on NC Supreme Court Seat from Justice Allison Riggs
Mon, 21 Apr 2025
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the latest major update on the North Carolina Supreme Court race where the Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs who won the November 2024 race is fighting against the MAGA opponent Jefferson Griffin who lost but is trying every scheme to undermine votes from last November. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened in the North Carolina Supreme Court race?
That right there was a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, for Justice Allison Riggs. You know, we've been covering this North Carolina Supreme Court race diligently here on the Midas Touch Network. This was the race back in November of 2024. that Justice Riggs, pro-democracy Democratic judge running as a Democrat, won. She beat Jefferson Griffin, the MAGA Republican. There were two recounts.
Chapter 2: How did the recounts affect the election outcome?
She won the first recount. She won the second recount. But you see, the MAGA Republican Jefferson Griffin wouldn't take the fact that he lost as a loss, that he filed lawsuits everywhere before the Court of Appeals, where he is a Court of Appeals judge. He actually won before his own court, the Court of Appeals, although he was not on the panel. Then it went to the Supreme Court very recently.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of the Supreme Court's ruling?
Last week, there was a mixed ruling there. You see Jefferson Griffin wanted to throw out 65,000 votes. The Supreme Court basically said that 5,000 are subject to Jefferson Griffin's ridiculous challenge after losing, and those were military votes. There's a recent update that it may be a less amount than those 5,000 that are actually going to be subject to the Supreme Court's ruling.
Heard a few different things, but somewhere in the range of 1,675 votes that are now subject to the Supreme Court's ruling. So at least there are some positive developments there, but I don't think we should take anything for granted where you have a MAGA Republican congressman MAGA Republican justice and MAGA Republican people were all very focused on trying to take this election where they lost.
Chapter 4: Why is voter disenfranchisement a critical issue?
Justice Riggs won. That's the story. There should be someone conceding, the loser in this case, Jefferson Griffin, with dignity, but that's not what he did. And this is a playbook I think we're going to be seeing across the country. It needs to be taken seriously. Let's bring in Justice Allison Riggs to give us an update on the latest. Justice Riggs, You've been fighting for what the people did.
They voted for you. And this has been a long, arduous, expensive process for you. So where are we right now?
Well, thanks for having me, Ben. It's a delight to be here. This is a rapidly changing situation. You're right. It does seem like the scope of voters impacted is shrinking, but I need folks to know, one, that my opponent is not accepting that. He wants more voters impacted, more voters potentially disenfranchised, and two,
This fight, a cure process going underway to chase and cure only 1,600, 1,700 ballots is, it's better in terms of the number of voters potentially disenfranchised, but it's just as toxic for our democracy because this sets a precedent that could be used anywhere in this country, will be used everywhere in this country,
which is if a candidate or a party is disappointed with who wins, they can go and look at the election laws that were on the books as of election day, the rules and the laws that people relied on and the rules they followed, And they can say, hmm, if I challenge this law, maybe enough votes are impacted, voters who were against me, to change the outcome of an election.
So the threat to democracy is existential. If this happens here, we will not be able to contain it. And so I am fighting tooth and nail, one, because one voter disenfranchised is too many. We enjoy the fundamental right to vote. The federal Constitution prohibits changing the rules of an election after the election.
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Chapter 5: What strategies are being used to challenge election results?
And really, we all should be offended that our service members and their families are being targeted in the way they are, because the people who are raised their hand to serve shouldn't be the first in line to lose their ballot. if they happen to be coming from a Democratic county. That's just not right. I come from a military family. I'm proud of my family's service.
And I will fight for the people like my dad who served. It's the very least I can do.
Chapter 6: How does this situation reflect broader political trends?
So what's particularly nefarious here and why this can be a playbook for autocracy across the country, what the MAGA Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin did, too, was after he lost the election, after he lost recount one, recount two, he then went on this process to challenge votes, but he targeted Democratic areas and he targeted only this race.
So it wasn't like, oh, there are all of these issues. in North Carolina that affect all of the races. No, no, no. What we should just focus on are certain democratic leaning areas, certain groups and classes of people in this race only. Don't challenge the stuff relating to Trump or Republican Congress members who won. That was fine. That must be okay.
But here, as it relates to an area where they lost, and otherwise, look, let's face it, in November, they had a pretty good election. I mean, they lost the governor's race, but at the national level, they won the presidency. But where they're challenging is you, Democratic areas. And if you can do that there...
then anybody can try to reverse engineer elections, then rely on, you know, are people going to even hear about this news and the process, you know, and then just try to just pick off election after election after election. That was that was what stood out for me about and your election. You were a former election lawyer before becoming a Supreme Court. So what do you make of that?
I mean, we've seen this happening in 2020 and 2022. This isn't new. I think the strategy is this cycle, well, there weren't that many close elections nationally. So we invested in these strategies to fight election results that national Republicans didn't like. And so let's see what we can do in a state Supreme Court race in one state.
because folks who would dismiss the will of voters really only needed to work once to be able to replicate it and hone it. And even though good judges from both parties were in part responsible for the efforts to overturn the 2020 election from failing, we know that folks just won't give up.
And I really I have seen the damage that election denialism and misinformation and disinformation has done to trust in our election systems. I've seen election officials that, you know, when I was in a nonpartisan civil rights job, these were people I worked with closely to help run elections. And they've been threatened. had their lives threatened.
So I've seen firsthand before I joined the bench, the damage that's being done. And I don't want voters or even national viewers to think, oh, well, because the margin of voters impacted has shrunk so much that she's likely to win.
i don't want people to make any assumptions on that because it really shouldn't matter a candidate's ground game six months after the election that should not come into play i won on election day voters cast their ballot then they decided i do have a great ground game and we will if we have to touch all of those voters but it's You know, it's six months after an election. People have moved on.
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