North Carolina Supreme Court throws out hundreds of ballots based on flawed data

This is a special collaboration between Popular Information and Anderson Alerts, a newsletter about North Carolina politics.

Josiah Young was born and raised in North Carolina. The 20-year-old attended community college in North Carolina and runs a drone photography business in the state. So Young was surprised to learn that the North Carolina Supreme Court recently ordered his 2024 general election ballot to be discarded based on the false allegation that he was "never" a resident of the state.

Young's ballot is one of about 260 that the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered to be invalidated after they were challenged by Jefferson Griffin, a candidate for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Griffin, a Republican, lost by 734 votes to Democrat Allison Riggs. Two recounts have confirmed Riggs' victory. But Griffin has continued to challenge the result, claiming that tens of thousands of ballots, including Young's, should be tossed.

The North Carolina Supreme Court tossed out 260 ballots identified by the Griffin campaign as "never residents." The court also ruled that overseas military ballots that were cast without providing a photo ID should not count unless the voter provides proof of their identity within 30 days. Taken together, these two rulings could reverse the result of the election, particularly since the Griffin campaign is only challenging ballots from four heavily Democratic counties.

For the 2024 election, Young requested an overseas ballot because he was studying abroad for a few months in Spain. "It just shows that there's really no interest in them trying to find out if these ballots are actual citizens or not," Young said in an interview. "If they wanted to look into this even just a little bit, it's pretty clear that my residence is in Jackson County. It's really not that hard to figure that out."

Young was one of dozens of people identified as "never residents" of North Carolina by the Griffin campaign despite publicly available evidence that they currently or previously lived in North Carolina. The North Carolina Supreme Court accepted a ruling from the North Carolina Court of Appeals that all the people on the list "were born to parents overseas, were never brought to North Carolina to reside during the entirety of their eighteen-year dependency as minors, and their domicile is overseas." This is not true.

Another voter whose ballot was discarded, Derrick Raphael, attended law school at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, from 2009-12 and worked in North Carolina for years after graduating. Raphael voted in person in North Carolina from 2006 to 2014. He has since been living and working in Canada with his spouse, but maintains his permanent residence in North Carolina. (Raphael did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

At least 11 voters whose ballots were discarded because they were allegedly "never residents" of North Carolina have voted in person in one or more North Carolina elections, strongly suggesting that they are, in fact, North Carolina residents.

Josey Wright, another voter Griffin's campaign claimed was ineligible, told Popular Information and Anderson Alerts that she "lived in Pitt County [North Carolina] until I was 18." In 2017, she went to England for college. Wright is currently studying at Cambridge, working on her PhD. She has voted in North Carolina as an absentee voter since 2018 without issue. "It’s ridiculous that they’re trying to discount so many people who have every legal right to vote in [North Carolina] elections," Wright said.

Neil McWilliam taught at Duke for 20 years, from 2003 to 2023. Since retiring, McWilliam has spent most of his time in France. But his vote in the 2024 election is now being challenged based on the allegation that he was never a resident of North Carolina. "As appears to be the case with much of Mr. Griffin's questioning of the result for the NC Supreme Court, the challenge to my vote is spurious," McWilliam said.

Other voters whose ballots were tossed for allegedly never residing in North Carolina include Cameron Avila (a postal worker based in Jacksonville, North Carolina), Abdulai Conteh (an army mechanic at Fort Bragg, North Carolina), and Vidyaranya Gargeya (a retired professor who taught at UNC-Greensboro for 30 years).

Overall, Popular Information and Anderson Alerts identified 29 people — through voting records, publicly available information, and interviews — whose votes were discarded who have lived or currently live in North Carolina. There were numerous others who also appear to be erroneously included on the list, but whose history could not be definitively established. These errors are particularly harmful because the North Carolina Supreme Court did not give impacted voters any opportunity to prove their eligibility.

How would these people end up on a list of people who never resided in North Carolina? According to Gerry Cohen, a member of the Wake County Board of Elections, the people ended up on Griffin's list by filling out a Federal Post Card Application for an absentee ballot and checking the box that read, "I am a U.S. citizen living outside the country, I have never lived in the United States."

It is possible that some voters checked that box in error. (In an interview, one voter confirmed they had checked the box by mistake.) In other cases, there could be an error in the records kept by the North Carolina Election Board. But either way, it does not make these voters "never residents" or invalidate their ballots.

There are voters on the list who, as the North Carolina Court of Appeals claimed, "were born to parents overseas, were never brought to North Carolina to reside during the entirety of their eighteen-year dependency as minors, and their domicile is overseas." But people in that category are still eligible to vote. A child born to American parents living overseas is domiciled by birth in the last place their parents lived in the United States. This domicile does not expire when the child turns 18.

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the people on the list were ineligible to vote because they had never lived in North Carolina and "lack an intent to live in North Carolina." But setting aside the errors, there is no evidence that anyone on the list lacks an intent to live in North Carolina. At most, they checked a box saying they are a United States citizen who has not lived in the United States.

Moreover, in 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly unanimously passed the Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act, which allows "individuals born overseas to parents or guardians who were North Carolina residents to vote in the state." They "are not required to have lived in North Carolina or the U.S."

Whether the voters on the list ultimately have their ballots counted is still to be determined. The North Carolina Board of Elections is still waiting for guidance from the state court about how to implement the order. On Monday, the Riggs campaign and the North Carolina Democratic Party challenged the North Carolina Supreme Court ruling in federal court. A federal judge has forbidden the North Carolina Board of Elections from certifying the election before the federal courts consider the case.

UPDATE: This article has been updated to clarify that Josiah Young attended a North Carolina community college.