On Friday, four Republican members of the North Carolina Supreme Court issued an order attempting to disenfranchise more than 5,000 of the state’s voters. This order is part of an ongoing effort by Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican and the losing candidate in a recent state supreme court race, to overturn Democratic state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs’ reelection in that race.

Four of the state’s Republican justices, in other words, are attempting to unseat one of their own Democratic colleagues and replace her with the Republican who lost his bid to unseat her.

Riggs’s victory over Griffin was very close, which is why canceling several thousand votes may be enough to change the result of this election. By official tallies, Riggs beat Griffin by just 734 votes.

Griffin’s attempt to steal this election closely resembles an even more famous court case about a contested election: Bush v. Gore (2000). Bush addressed the nail-bitingly close 2000 presidential election in Florida. Initial tallies showed Republican George W. Bush with just a 537 vote lead, and whoever prevailed in Florida would also win a term in the White House.

Democrat Al Gore, meanwhile, sought a recount of some Florida ballots in the hopes that this recount would push him over the top. But we’ll never know if Bush or Gore was the proper winner of the 2000 presidential election because the Supreme Court effectively halted that recount in Bush.

The stunning thing about the North Carolina Supreme Court’s recent decision, in a case known as

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