A political war has erupted over a state Supreme Court race in North Carolina more than two months after Democrats appeared to narrowly clinch the seat.

Justice Allison Riggs, the Democratic incumbent, finished just 734 votes ahead of her Republican challenger, Jefferson Griffin, with more than 5 million votes cast in the race — making it one of the closest in the country. But a lawsuit from Griffin has prevented the state elections board from certifying Riggs as the winner after two recounts confirmed her lead.

Now Democrats are up in arms about what they say amounts to a GOP attempt to overturn the results and steal a seat on the court.

“It is bigger than just one race in North Carolina,” North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton told reporters at a press conference. “We’re talking about a calculated effort by a sitting judge to throw out votes and reject the results of a fair and free election.”

The saga has continued for months without resolution, even as other successful candidates have already begun their terms across the country.

The state Supreme Court currently has a 5-2 Republican majority, with Riggs and one other justice in the minority. But several of the justices won their most recent elections by razor-thin margins, and polling showed the Riggs-Griffin contest was likely to be close.

Once the votes were initially counted, Riggs came out ahead, but by a much smaller margin than the 0.5-point threshold required for a candidate to be allowed to request a recount. That recount maintained Riggs’s 734-vote lead, and a second recount, partially done by hand, slightly

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