The North Carolina Supreme Court ordered the counting of tens of thousands of ballots in a contentious judicial election.

State's highest court ruled 4–2 on April 11 that election authorities must consider ballots from those registered since 2004 but without driver's license numbers or last four digits of Social Security numbers, as Fox News reported.

The majority argued that a lower court incorrectly ruled in April that votes could not be counted without voter eligibility verification before a deadline.

The state Supreme Court stated that the North Carolina State Board of Elections was responsible for not ensuring voters presented the numbers.

From the order

“The Board’s inattention and failure to dutifully conform its conduct to the law’s requirements is deeply troubling. Nevertheless, our precedent on this issue is clear,” the April 11 order stated

“Because the responsibility for the technical defects in the voters’ registrations rests with the Board and not the voters, the wholesale voiding of ballots cast by individuals who subsequently proved their identity to the Board by complying with the voter identification law would undermine the principle that ’this is a government of the people, in which the will of the people—the majority—legally expressed, must govern.'”

The decision might have come to a different conclusion, according to the ruling, if there was evidence showing “that a significant number of the roughly 60,000 ballots in the first category were cast by individuals whose identity was not verified by voter identification or who were not otherwise qualified to vote,” according to the order.

Sitting It Out

The decision is concerning a 2024 state Supreme Court election that was hotly contested. In a race with almost 5.5 million votes, Democrat Justice Allison Riggs led appeals court judge Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes.

Riggs did not participate in the current verdict, which mostly upheld two prior appellate court rulings.

The judges, however, did not overturn the previous ruling that military and voters currently overseas who did not produce a photographic ID or fill out identity exception forms must do so to vote.

Updated terms

Because of the decision, electors were granted 15 business days by the appeals court to correct the situation. However, the state Supreme Court gave the group 30 calendar days to fix the issue.

The majority also made no changes to the conclusion that voters who have never resided in the United States are ineligible to vote.

Riggs said in a statement to news outlets, “It is unacceptable that the Court is choosing to selectively disenfranchise North Carolinians serving our country, here and overseas.”

The ruling “is consistent with what we asked in our initial filing,” a spokesperson for Griffin told news outlets in a statement.