Republicans drop NC Supreme Court appeals in two election cases

State and national Republican Party groups are dropping appeals to the North Carolina Supreme Court in two election-related cases. At least one case is heading toward a settlement, according to court filings Thursday.

Both cases are called Kivett v. North Carolina State Board of Elections. Both had ties to the monthslong legal dispute between Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin over the outcome of the 2024 state Supreme Court election.

One appeal was tied to Republican groups’ challenge of incomplete state voter registration records. The suit alleged that state elections officials violated registration requirements tied to the federal Help America Vote Act.

“[T]here is no further relief sought from this Court,” the Republican groups’ lawyers wrote Thursday. “The Parties to this appeal have been pursuing a settlement agreement which will successfully resolve the underlying dispute. The Parties are in the process of finalizing said agreement. As a result, Plaintiffs respectfully request the Court enter an order dismissing this appeal in its entirety.”

Lawyers for the other parties in the dispute “consent to the requested relief,” according to the court filing. All parties will cover their own costs.

The second Kivett case addressed “never residents,” a group of voters who have cast ballots in North Carolina elections despite never living in the state. The Republican groups’ lawsuit accused elections officials of violating the North Carolina Constitution by counting ballots cast by these voters in state elections.

As with the previous case, “there is no further relief sought from this court,” GOP lawyers wrote. The Republican groups asked again for an order “dismissing this appeal in its entirety.” The court filing did not include language about a potential settlement.

The state Supreme Court issued orders on Jan. 30 asking Republican plaintiffs whether they still sought any relief in the Kivett cases.

Both disputes had ties to the 2024 state Supreme Court contest.

Riggs, a Democrat and an appointed incumbent, had to wait until May 2025 to be certified as the winner of the November 2024 election. She defeated Griffin, a Republican state Appeals Court judge, by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast.

Griffin challenged the results in state and federal court. He questioned more than 65,000 ballots cast statewide. Most were cast by voters with registration records that appeared to lack federally required driver’s license or Social Security numbers. Griffin’s challenges also focused on overseas voters who provided no photo identification and “never residents,” voters who checked a box on a voter form indicating they had never lived in North Carolina.

The State Board of Elections certified Riggs as the winner after US Chief District Judge Richard Myers issued a May 5, 2025, order ending the election dispute. Myers rejected a state Supreme Court decision in April 2025 that placed at least 1,675 and as many as 5,700 ballots from the 2024 election in question.

In one Kivett case, Republican Party lawyers first turned to the state Supreme Court days before the November 2024 election.

“Plaintiffs seek a simple but necessary solution to remedy an ongoing and increasingly dangerous threat to the integrity of North Carolina’s elections,” they wrote. “Evidence in the record makes clear that Defendants are allowing, in their own words, an ‘unknown’ number of overseas citizens who have never resided in North Carolina to register and vote in the state’s elections. This is an unabashed violation of Article VI § 2 of the state Constitution. Thus, Plaintiffs seek an order enjoining Defendants from counting these potentially illegal ballots and instead segregating and counting them as provisional ballots until the voter’s qualifications under all applicable and constitutional state and federal laws can be adequately established.”

In the other Kivett case, GOP lawyers challenged the state elections board’s voter registration practices.

“For over a decade the NCSBE employed a voter registration form which failed to collect the applicant’s driver’s license number or their social security number,” according to a February 2025 Supreme Court petition. “The NCSBE recognized this failure when it changed the statewide registration form on a forward-looking basis. However, the NCSBE repeatedly refused to contact any of the individuals who returned statutorily deficient registration forms. As a result, approximately 225,000 people are erroneously deemed ‘registered’ to vote in the state, despite each one failing to provide the driver’s license or a social security number required by law.”

Republican groups filed both Kivett cases while Democrats held a 3-2 majority on the State Board of Elections. Senate Bill 382, approved after the 2024 election, transferred election board appointments from the governor to the state auditor. Then-Gov. Roy Cooper and his successor, Gov. Josh Stein, are Democrats. Auditor Dave Boliek is a Republican.

Boliek used his appointments in 2025 to flip the elections board to a 3-2 Republican majority. The North Carolina Appeals Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in Stein’s lawsuit challenging the appointment shift.

The US Justice Department sued the elections board last spring over the issue of incomplete voter registration records. Justice Department lawyers and the Republican-led state elections board reached a settlement of that suit last September. The board’s ongoing Registration Repair Project is designed to fill in gaps in voters’ registration information.

“Republicans drop NC Supreme Court appeals in two election cases” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.