Chris Marshall took care to cast a ballot last fall while in France tending to his business, and was surprised to find months after the 2024 election that Judge Jefferson Griffin wanted his vote thrown out.
Griffin challenged Marshall and thousands of other military and overseas absentee voters who did not provide photo ID with their ballots. The State Board of Elections did not require it. Most military and civilian overseas voters cast ballots using a special portal that does not provide a way to include a photo.
Griffin worked to have their votes in the Supreme Court race tossed, but the state Supreme Court said they should have a chance to submit IDs.
Now back home in Durham, Marshall and his wife Moira Smullen tried to address the problem by checking to see if they could submit photos using the same electronic portal they used to vote. They couldn’t.
“Right now, it’s just wait and see what happens,” he said.
Phoebe Zerwick, director of the Journalism Program at Wake Forest University, was teaching in Venice when she voted last year. She researched ways to vote before she left North Carolina. She cast her ballot electronically, relieved that she didn’t have to depend on the Italian postal system. She didn’t know her vote was being challenged until after Christmas.
Marshall, Zerwick and other voters — it’s still unclear how many — are trapped in electoral limbo. They’re waiting on the sidelines while court fights with more twists and hairpin turns than a rollercoaster run through state and federal courts.
The outcome will determine whether they or any of the military and overseas voters whom Griffin is challenging will have to provide a photo ID in order for their votes to count in the Supreme Court race.
It’s been a long ride.
Where things stand
Nearly six months after the election, major questions remain unanswered. It’s not certain that overseas voters will have to provide photo ID.
Griffin, a Republican Court of Appeals judge, is trying to unseat Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs for a place on the state’s high court. He trails by 734 votes and tried to convince state courts to throw out more than 60,000 votes in his attempt to win.
Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin (File photo)The state Supreme Court decided earlier this month that the biggest stack of votes Griffin challenged for what he said were incomplete voter registrations should be counted. But the court majority said overseas and military voters should have provided photo ID last fall, even though the state Board of Elections said they didn’t need to.
The North Carolina law covering military and overseas absentee voters is patterned on a federal law that exempts them from photo ID requirements. But the Supreme Court majority agreed with Griffin that the state voter ID law applies to all.
Those voters would have 30 days from the point the elections board sends them notices to provide ID or submit a form stating why they cannot, the court ordered.
The court majority also decided that a few hundred voters whom Griffin classified as “never residents” should not have their votes counted in the race. These voters were described as people who have never lived in the state but are connected to North Carolina through their parents.
However, a reporter writing for The Assembly found that some of the voters on Griffin’s “never residents” list live in North Carolina.
Immediately after the April 11 state Supreme Court decision, Riggs appealed in federal court. Federal District Court Judge Richard Myers II told the state Board of Elections to prepare to follow the state order, but this Tuesday a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel approved Riggs’ request for a stay and told the board to stop what it was doing, at least temporarily.
The Board of Elections last week told Myers it would instruct only Guilford County to contact its 1,409 military and overseas voters about providing a photo ID. The only Griffin protest of overseas and military absentee voters submitted by the legal deadline concerned Guilford, a lawyer for the board wrote.
The board is working with a vendor to adapt the electronic portal to accept IDs, its lawyer told the judge.
The 260 “never residents” registered in 53 counties in Griffin’s protests would get the chance to prove that they had lived there, the board’s lawyer told the judge.
Griffin doesn’t like the board’s plan. He wants military and overseas voters from six counties — Durham, Forsyth, New Hanover, Cumberland, and Buncombe, along with Guilford — to be required to provide ID and asked the state Court of Appeals to make the state Board do it. In a court filing, Griffin’s lawyers said the protests were filed on time, even though they didn’t have voter names. Griffin also objected to the state board giving “never residents” a chance to prove that they lived in the state because the court did not say those voters could “cure” their ballots. Griffin wants “never resident” votes from all 100 counties deleted.
No official notice to individual voters yet
While the court fight occupies both state and federal courts, the State Board of Elections told county elections officials to sit tight. Local administrators were told not to contact overseas or military voters about IDs because the litigation is ongoing. The board does, however, have information for voters on its website.
NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs (Photo: www.nccourts.gov)Voters may choose to submit copies of their IDs or ID exception forms to their county board offices. Counties were instructed to store them in a secure place.
The state Democratic Party is not waiting. It plans to start calling voters on Friday, according to an email to supporters and posts on X.
Zerwick is considering a trip to her county elections board with her husband, whose vote is also being challenged, to show their IDs.
“I’m uneasy waiting for whatever the process is going to be,” she said. “I’d like to get that over and done with.”
Zerwick has been following the lawsuits and appeals, but she’s worried about Wake Forest students and students from other universities who voted while they were studying abroad.
Most of the counties where Griffin is challenging overseas and military absentee voters are home to major universities. In a few weeks, most students will be leaving school for the summer.
“Students don’t check email over the summer to receive instructions,” Zerwick said.
Duke University students studying abroad last fall had detailed instructions on how to vote. Nevertheless, 264 Duke students face challenges for not showing ID.
Olivia Schramkowski, a Duke University junior, created a voting guide for Duke students studying abroad last year as part of her work with the Student Voting Rights Lab at Duke and NC Central University. The state Board of Elections told her, through an email to university administration, that they did not need photo ID.
Schramkowski herself voted last year while studying abroad. She heard about the Griffin challenges, but a search for her name on his original challenge list came up blank. “I thought I was good to go,” she said.
Later, she Googled her name as part of a class assignment. It popped up in a Wake County court case she knew nothing about. She clicked on a list of challenged voters and found her name.
Schramkowski spoke to someone on Wednesday who didn’t know their vote was being challenged. She too worries about students leaving campus without knowing their votes may be in jeopardy.
Although she’s heard that third parties are trying to track down students, “there are massive gaps in communication,” she said. “There’s a big concern on my part that students’ votes won’t count if we won’t be in the state over the summer.”
A voter assistance hotline (888-687-8683) is already getting calls and texts from folks with questions about where Griffin’s challenges stand and what they can do to make sure their votes count.
Katelin Kaiser, policy director at Democracy North Carolina, said parents whose children are overseas have been calling for advice on how to protect their children’s votes.
People need help navigating “this really complicated — unfairly complicated — situation,” she said.
Marshall will be traveling back and forth to Europe this year, all the while waiting for instructions.
“It’s important that our vote counts,” he said.
“It’s fascinating and interesting and scary all at the same time, these games that they’re playing,” Marshall said. “It’s really shocking and just blatantly disregarding the law.”
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