It has now been more than two months since Election Day in November, but a race for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, in which Democratic candidate Justice Allison Riggs leads Republican challenger Judge Jefferson Griffin by around 700 votes, remains uncalled.

That race will remain undecided for at least a few more weeks after the state Supreme Court granted Griffin's request to impose a temporary stay to prevent official certification of the race, according to The Hill.

Yet, while Democrats are infuriated and Republicans cheered about the ruling, the victory for Griffin is only preliminary and may prove fleeting as there is no guarantee that he will ultimately prevail on the merits of his claims that tens of thousands of ineligible voters cast ballots in the disputed race.

Court grants requested stay

In a brief amended order issued on Tuesday, a majority of the GOP-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court agreed to take up Judge Griffin's legal challenges to the state Board of Elections' determination that Justice Riggs won the election and that the "matter should be addressed
expeditiously because it concerns certification of an election."

As such, Griffin's request for a temporary stay to block certification was granted and an expedited briefing schedule was set to consider the arguments from both sides of the dispute before the end of the month.

Notably, given her central role in the litigation, Justice Riggs recused herself from the matter, which resulted in a 4-2 decision as Democratic Justice Anita Earls and Republican Justice Richard Dietz wrote dissenting opinions explaining why they wouldn't have issued the stay.

Dissenting opinions

Justice Trey Allen, who wrote the majority decision, also submitted a concurring opinion in which he sought to "stress that the Court’s order granting Judge Griffin’s motion for temporary stay should not be taken to mean that Judge Griffin will ultimately prevail on the merits."

"It seems necessary to make this point because the opinions filed by my dissenting colleagues could give the opposite impression to readers unfamiliar with the intricacies of appellate procedure," he added as he further noted that the stay was intended solely to ensure that Griffin's case didn't become "moot" by certification before his arguments could be fully considered.

On the other hand, Justice Earls wrote in her dissent that Griffin had failed to prove that he was likely to succeed on the merits of his challenge as well as that he had not gone about his challenge of the election results through the proper procedures for litigation.

"For this Court to intervene in an unprecedented way to stop that process, where there is no underlying merit to the contention that some 60,000 citizens who registered to vote and voted should have their votes thrown out, there must be a strong showing of the likelihood of success on the merits," she wrote. "There is no such showing here. Therefore, I dissent."

Likewise, while Justice Dietz suggested he might agree with some of the arguments raised by Griffin's challenge, he took issue with the timing of the challenge in explaining why he wouldn't have granted the requested stay to block certification of the disputed race.

"Permitting post-election litigation that seeks to rewrite our state’s election rules -- and, as a result, remove the right to vote in an election from people who already lawfully voted under the existing rules -- invites incredible mischief," Dietz wrote. "It will lead to doubts about the finality of vote counts following an election, encourage novel legal challenges that greatly delay certification of the results, and fuel an already troubling decline in public faith in our elections."

Dems say Riggs won "fair and square"

Democrats are, of course, outraged, and the Raleigh News & Observer reported that North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said in a statement, "Justice Allison Riggs won her seat fair and square and that will continue to be demonstrated before the courts."

"We are in this position due to Jefferson Griffin refusing to accept the will of the people," Clayton added. "He is hellbent on finding new ways to overthrow this election but we are confident that the evidence will show, like they did throughout multiple recounts, that she is the winner in this race."