The front page of the Dec. 11 edition of the Cherokee Scout included a short story about Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin challenging more than 60,000 ballots as part of his attempt to unseat Democratic incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. The N.C. Board of Elections has since declined Griffin’s challenge.
Riggs had a lead of 734 votes after all 5.5 million ballots were counted the first time, a machine recount Griffin requested affirmed that 734-vote lead and a partial hand recount confirmed it again. Griffin then asked for more than 60,000 ballots statewide to be thrown out because their voter registration forms included something like a partial Social Security number or driver’s license number.
More than 140 ballots in Cherokee County were involved in Griffin’s challenge. You can read the entire list online at tinyurl.com/4evrsypk.
In an effort to let readers know these were 140 real people – not just a number thrown out in a lawsuit – the Scout shared in the article the names of four prominent residents of Cherokee County whose ballots were questioned. These folks did nothing wrong – their ballots were challenged because of incomplete information in the registration, not for reasons of alleged fraud or illegal activity. And they still had to show an ID.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop some people in the community from assuming that the local newspaper naming those four individuals must be a negative, when nothing could be further from the truth. These are not shady people; they’re exactly the kind of people who try to do things the right way, which made it even more surprising that their ballots were on the list.
The only message the Scout was trying to share is if good folks like this can get caught up in an unfortunate political wrangling that ended up in a lawsuit, it could happen to anybody. So dot your I’s and cross your T’s every time you fill out a ballot, less it be possibly thrown out by someone who thinks fewer votes could swing an election.
– Publisher David Brown