Rhiannon Camarillo left the polls in November feeling confident she had done everything right. She had gathered all the proper materials, voted early, and even visited the Durham County Board of Elections office in person months in advance to verify that her registration was accurate.
“I took every step I could to mitigate the risk,” she said. “I felt confident enough that I was educating other people about how to cast their vote and sharing resources about what steps to take.”
Camarillo, a 21-year-old Duke University public policy major, is deeply involved in voting rights organizations on campus. She served as project director for Project Citizen — a program that teaches first-year students about civic engagement — and works with the Student Voting Rights Lab at Duke University and N.C. Central University. Leading up to the election, her team sent thousands of texts and emails to students across the state to help them navigate the voter registration process.
Despite her preparation, Camarillo finds herself among 60,273 legal North Carolina voters whose ballots are being challenged. Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for the North Carolina Supreme Court, is seeking to disqualify these votes after three separate counts confirmed the narrow victory of his opponent, Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs. Riggs won by just 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast.
Among those whose ballots are under examination, young people like Camarillo are disproportionately affected. An analysis by the Voting Rights Lab found that 12,660 voters aged 18-25 are included in Griffin’s challenge, making youth voters 3.4 times more likely than those over 65 to have their ballots questioned.
In urban counties, the disparities are starker. Youth voters in Durham were nearly seven times more likely to have their votes challenged, the analysis found. Voting Rights Lab director Gunther Peck, a Duke history professor, argues that Griffin’s challenge is a direct attack on youth voting rights.
“It’s so deeply unethical and unfair,” Peck said. “People are watching. And if this is successful here, then the weapon works. It’s bad not just for Democrats. This is bad for Republicans, too.”
Camarillo was both disheartened and surprised to hear that her ballot could be tossed.
“I was just so excited about this,” she said. “This was my first time voting. I have my noble ‘I Voted’ sticker on my wall. And to be one of the people whose vote is now not being counted, it goes against all the drive I had this election.”
An inconsistent challenge
Griffin’s challenge focuses on voters with “incomplete registration,” arguing their files lacked either a driver’s license or Social Security number. Yet Griffin was selective in targeting that category. His campaign only challenged absentee and early ballots. More than 28,000 voters with similar registration issues who cast their ballots on Election Day were excluded from Griffin’s challenge.
His protest also excludes over 159,000 voters with the same registration issue who registered before 2004. These exempted voters are older, whiter, and more likely to be Republican, according to the Voting Rights Lab’s analysis.
The challenged voters are disproportionately younger and disproportionately Black, their analysis shows.
Griffin says he’s protesting the count of “unlawful ballots.”
“This case presents a fundamental question: who decides our election laws?” his petition reads. “Is it the people and their elected representatives, or the unelected bureaucrats sitting on the State Board of Elections?”
Griffin’s team, however, has not proven any cases of fraud among the 60,000 ballots. The State Board of Elections says voters remain eligible even if their files lack a driver’s license or social security number, as long as they present a valid ID — something every voter was required to do before casting a ballot.
The lab has not yet examined the N.C. Central data, but has looked closely at numbers for Duke. Peck says that so far, among the 492 Duke undergraduates whose ballots are being contested, his team hasn’t found a single instance of a student making a mistake while registering. Instead, it appears that students are paying the price for clerical and procedural errors by others.
“There are flaws and small clerical duplications that are built into the existing system that should be fixed,” Peck said. “But all sides know that’s how the system works in an election. It’s not fraud. It’s not malicious.”
“What is fraudulent is changing the rules in the midst of an election and weaponizing the system,” he continued.
The future of the challenged votes now rests with the courts. After the State Board of Elections, which has a Democratic majority, rejected Griffin’s protests last month, Griffin appealed to the state Supreme Court. In a 4-2 decision, the Republican-dominated court blocked certification of Riggs’ win.
Just one Republican, Justice Richard Dietz, broke ranks with his colleagues and dissented from the decision, writing that the ruling “invites incredible mischief” and “seeks to remove the legal right to vote from people who lawfully voted.”
The State Board of Elections and Justice Riggs were scheduled to file a response brief with the state Supreme Court today. The Board of Elections has also filed an appeal with the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and oral arguments are scheduled for Jan. 27 in Richmond, Virginia.
The courts’ decisions could have far-reaching implications not only for the 60,000 ballots but also for the balance of power in North Carolina’s highest court. Among other things, the state Supreme Court plays a decisive role in ruling on the state’s election districts, which are currently gerrymandered to favor Republicans. If Riggs loses her seat, Republicans will further solidify their hold on the court, with a 6-1 majority.
‘Nothing surprises me anymore’
At Duke University, many students remain unaware that their votes are being contested. The protest was filed when many were away for winter break. While some received letters in the mail from the state Republican Party, others only learned about it through professors or peers who saw their names on the list.
Kyle Abrahm, a senior, said he learned that his vote was being challenged when his engineering dean sent him an email.“I was so confused,” he said. “I totally thought the email was a scam.”
Sarah Kate Ashton, another senior, also received the news in an email from a faculty member. “I was confused and stressed when I got the email because I really wanted my vote to count,” she said.
Sofia Dib-Gomez, a freshman who works with the Voting Rights Lab, was also surprised to find her name on the list. She helped register hundreds of students to vote through the campus organization Duke Votes.
“I double-checked my ballot like 20 times because I wanted to make sure everything was perfect, including my registration,” she said. “I wish I had evidence to prove that I did it correctly, but I know that I did. I’m insanely frustrated.”
Sofia Bliss-Carrascosa, a senior whose vote is being questioned, said she brought three different forms of identification to the voting booth to ensure her vote would count.
And it’s not just students who’ve been affected. For instance, a disproportionate number of Durham County ballots are included in Griffin’s protest. Phil Napoli, director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke University and a public policy professor, is among those whose votes have been challenged. He says he’s been registered to vote in the state for almost nine years and has never encountered issues before.
“I’m cynically bemused. Nothing surprises me anymore,” Napoli said. “But I would be infuriated if my ballot were thrown away and that has an impact on the ultimate election outcome.”
‘Students didn’t do anything wrong’
In response to the challenge, some Duke students have rallied to spread awareness. On Friday afternoon, students from the Voting Rights Lab set up a table on the main campus plaza where passersby could search for their names on the list of contested voters.
Many students who stopped by learned for the first time that their votes had been challenged. They were encouraged to record testimonial videos, complete a voter challenge questionnaire, and send emails to Jefferson Griffin’s campaign and to Paul Newby, chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
Currently, there is no easy way for voters to remove themselves from Griffin’s list. The State Board of Elections advises those concerned about their registration to contact their county board to update their information. While this may protect their eligibility in future elections, it probably won’t make a difference in this election. The fate of the 60,000 ballots will likely be decided in court.
Steve Rawson, chair of the Durham Democratic Party, says the party is launching a public pressure campaign to urge Griffin to withdraw his protest.
“A party and a candidate who lost legitimately but don’t like the outcome of that election are resorting to trying to retroactively cancel lawful votes,” Rawson said. “That is a massive concern for the integrity of our democracy.”
Peck is also encouraging students to speak up and share their stories.
“Students on the list didn’t do anything wrong,” Peck said. “But they need to fight for their rights because that’s the world we live in now.”
Above: Jolie Futterman of the Duke Student Voting Rights Lab talks with students about Jefferson Griffin’s challenge of more than 60,000 N.C. votes. Photo by Abigail Bromberger — The 9th Street Journal
Storey Wertheimer
