It has been roughly two months since millions of North Carolina voters cast ballots in November to determine who would fill a seat on that state's Supreme Court, but that race has still not been decided yet.

In fact, a final call on the race's results has been indefinitely delayed until legal challenges filed by the trailing candidate are fully addressed and settled in court, according to the Washington Examiner.

As things currently stand, Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin is lagging behind Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs by just 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast, but Griffin hopes to change that by having approximately 60,000 allegedly ineligible ballots tossed from the final count.

Griffin wants tens of thousands of ballots tossed

The Examiner reported that Griffin led Riggs on Election Day but watched his lead evaporate in the following days, which led to multiple recounts and the current situation of Riggs holding a relatively narrow advantage over her challenger.

Meanwhile, Griffin filed legal challenges in each of North Carolina's counties that collectively challenged the eligibility of around 60,000 voters in the state, and he has taken that legal fight to the state's highest court with a request for the ballots of all of those allegedly improperly registered voters to be tossed out and not counted in the final tally.

The Democrat-controlled North Carolina State Board of Elections had previously rejected Griffin's claims of ineligible voters but have refrained from certifying the results of the judicial race until all of the pending legal challenges have been addressed and settled.

Riggs opposes further delays

NC Newsline reported that Justice Riggs has responded to Judge Griffin's legal challenges by asking a federal judge to reject Griffin's request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the state Board of Elections from certifying the results of the judicial race.

She argued that a swift resolution is necessary to instill confidence in the public once the state Supreme Court is back in session and hearing cases, as some members of the public might assume that an improperly elected official was presiding over said cases, and said in a brief, "That risk is particularly unacceptable for election protests that seek to disenfranchise thousands of North Carolina voters by changing the rules after the election concludes."

The brief further insisted that all of the challenged ballots must be counted and stated, "Every voter targeted by Judge Griffin complied with settled election law when they voted. Judge Griffin’s effort to throw out their ballots violates both federal and state law."

Alleged incomplete and outdated voter registration forms

The apparent problem here, per a PBS News Hour report, is voters who registered decades ago and didn't provide a driver's license number or Social Security number, which became a requirement after the Help America Vote Act was passed in the early 2000s.

The issue has been raised in prior election cycles and been dismissed by the courts or state elections board each time, and was also noted voters in this most recent cycle with outdated or incomplete registration forms would have been required to show a valid photo ID or sign an exception form that then would have been reviewed by elections officials to confirm their eligibility.

Interestingly enough, the report further pointed out that included among the approximately 60,000 voters challenged by Griffin were Riggs' parents and others who've been considered "valid voters" for decades.

Delay raised suspicions of fraud

As for the interminable delay in finalizing the results of the North Carolina Supreme Court race, WRAL News reported in late November that it was hoped that the results would be certified by early December, though it was noted at that time that Judge Griffin's legal challenges could lead to additional delays.

At the same time, the flipped result after Election Day plus the slow pace of the initial ballot count and subsequent recounts had prompted suspicions of fraud from Republican State Senate leader Phil Berger, who quipped to reporters, "We're seeing played out, at this point, another episode of 'Count until somebody you want to win wins,'" and also said, "We are now what, almost three weeks from the election. And they're still counting votes? Something ain't working right."