by Doug Bock Clark

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As a member of the Army National Guard in 2019 and 2020, Jefferson Griffin voted in North Carolina elections using military absentee ballots.

Now, as he seeks to overturn the results of a state Supreme Court election that went against him, Griffin is asking that same court to disqualify the votes of around 5,500 people who voted in the same manner as he had.

Since Democrat Allison Riggs won reelection to the state’s highest court last year by 734 votes, Griffin, now a Republican judge on the state’s Court of Appeals, has repeatedly tried to nullify her victory. Last week, the Republican majority on the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked the certification of Riggs’ win after Griffin filed a legal petition arguing that the election should be awarded to him.

In a briefing, Griffin’s lawyers argued that ballots cast by overseas and military voters should not be counted if they did not also provide photo identification, such as a photocopy of a driver’s license. His position contradicts that of the state election board, which had issued a rule before the election stating that such voters did not have to provide an ID.

Griffin’s use of these military ballots, which ProPublica confirmed using publicly available voting data and documents obtained via an open records request, has not been previously reported.

Two of Griffin’s absentee ballot requests came while he was deployed as a captain and a judge advocate general in the North Carolina Army National Guard. They were covered by a federal law called the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, more commonly known as UOCAVA.

In August 2019, for a municipal election, Griffin requested an absentee ballot, checking a box attesting that he was a “Member of the Uniformed Services........

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