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- [00:01]
Ben
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply that right There was a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina for Justice Allison Riggs. You know, we've been covering this North Carolina Supreme Court race diligently here on the Midas Touch Network. This was the race back in November of 2024 that Justice Riggs, pro democracy Democratic judge running as a Democrat, won. She beat Jefferson Griffin, the MAGA Republican. There were two recounts. She won the first recount, she won the second recount. But you see, the MAGA Republican, Jefferson Griffin wouldn't take the fact that he lost as a loss. So then he filed lawsuits everywhere before the Court of Appeals, where he is a Court of Appeals judge. He actually won before his own court, the Court of Appeals, although he was not on the panel. Then it went to the Supreme Court. Very recently, last week, there was a mixed ruling there. You see, Jefferson Griffin wanted to throw out 65,000 votes. The Supreme Court basically said that 5,000 are subject to Jefferson Griffin's ridiculous challenge after losing. And those were military votes. There's a recent update that it may be a less amount than those 5,000 that are actually gonna be subject to the Supreme Court's ruling. Heard a few different things, but somewhere in the range of 1600 or 1,675 votes that are now subject to the Supreme Court's ruling. So at least there are some positive developments there. But I don't think we should take anything for granted where you have a MAGA Republican Congress member or a MAGA Republican justice and MAGA Republican people who are all very focused trying to take this election where they lost. Justice Riggs won. That's the story. There should be someone conceding the loser in this case, Jefferson Griffin, with dignity. But that's not what he did. And this is a playbook I think we're going to be seeing across the country and needs to be taken seriously. Let's bring in Justice Allison Riggs to give us an update on the latest. Justice Riggs, you've been fighting for what the people did. They voted for you. And this has been a long, arduous, expensive process for you. So where are we right now?
- [02:58]
Justice Allison Riggs
Well, thanks for having me, Ben. It's a delight to be here. This is a rapidly changing situation. You're right. It does seem like the scope of voters impacted is shrinking. But I need folks to know, one, that my opponent is not accepting that he wants more voters impacted, more voters potentially disenfranchised. And two, this fight, a cure process going underway to chase and cure only 16, 1700 ballots is. It's better in terms of the number of voters potentially disenfranchised, but it's just as toxic for our democracy because this sets a precedent that could be used anywhere in this country, will be used everywhere in this country, which is if a candidate or a party is disappointed with who wins, they can go and look at the election laws that were on the books as of Election Day, the rules and the laws that people relied on and the rules they followed, and they can say, if I challenge this law, maybe enough votes are impacted voters who were against me to change the outcome of an election. So the threat to democracy is existential. If this happens here, we will not be able to contain it. And so I am fighting tooth and nail. One, because one voter disenfranchised is too many. We enjoy the fundamental right to vote. The federal constitution prohibits changing the rules of an election after the election. And really, we all should be offended that our service members and their families. Families are being targeted in the way they are because the people who are raised their hand to serve shouldn't be the first in line to lose their ballot if they happen to be coming from a Democratic county. That's just not right. I come from a military family. I'm proud of my family's service and I will fight for the people like my dad who served. It's the very least I can do.
- [05:17]
Ben
So what's particularly nefarious here and why this could be a playbook for autocracy across the country? What the MAGA Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin did, too, was after he lost the election, after he lost, recount one, recount two, he then went on this process to challenge votes, but he targeted Democratic areas and he targeted only this race. So it wasn't like, oh, there are all of these issues in North Carolina that infect all of the races. No, no, no. What we should just focus on are certain Democratic leaning areas. Certain groups and classes of people in this race only don't challenge the stuff relating to Trump or Republican Congress members who won. That was fine, that must be okay. But here, as it relates to an area where they Lost in an otherwise, look, let's face it, in November they had a pretty good election. I mean, you know, they lost the governor's race, but in the national level they won the presidency, you know, so, but, but where they're challenging is you democratic areas. And if you can do that there, then anybody can try to reverse engineer elections then rely on, you know, are people going to even hear about this news and the process, you know, and then just try to just pick off election after election after election. That was, that was what stood out for me about and your election. You were a former election lawyer before becoming a Supreme Court justice. What do you make of that?
- [06:53]
Justice Allison Riggs
I mean, we, we've seen this happening in 2020 and 2022. This isn't new. I think the strategy is this cycle. Well, there weren't that many close elections nationally. So we invested in these strategies to fight election results that national Republicans didn't like. And so let's see what we can do in a state Supreme Court race in one state. Because they, you know, folks who would dismiss the will of voters really only needed to work once to be able to replicate it and hone it. And even though, you know, good judges from both parties were in part responsible for the efforts to overturn the 2020 election from failing, we know that, you know, folks just won't give up. And I really, I have seen the damage that election denialism and misinformation and disinformation has done to trust in our election systems. I've seen election officials that, you know, when I was in a nonpartisan civil rights job, these were people I worked with closely to help run elections. And they've been threatened, had their lives threatened. So I've seen firsthand before I joined the bench the damage that's being done. And I don't want voters or even national viewers to think, oh well, because the margin of voters impacted has shrunk so much that she's likely to win. I don't want people to make any assumptions on that because it really shouldn't matter. A candidate's ground game six months after the election, that should not come into play. I won on election day, Voters cast their ballot, then they decided. I do have a great ground game and we will if we have to touch all of those voters. But it's, you know, it's six months after an election. People are, have moved on. They're, they're not worried about it. And these are overseas military deployed voters. So these are folks who are hard to get in touch with, are not necessarily thinking there was any problem with their ballot. They didn't cast a provisional ballot. They used a long standing federal law and a federal law and federal pathway for voting that and they were told they did not need to copy their ID and send it in through a portal that didn't even have an option for doing that. So long winded way of saying I need folks to stay really plugged in on this. I have not dialed this down one ounce. I am fighting incredibly hard to stop this process from even starting this. They're calling it a cure process but cure implies there was something wrong with these ballots. There was not. But I'm sto. I'm fighting to stop this process because it is toothpaste out of the proverbial tube. If we start this and you know, I end up winning and the case becomes moot, you still have this precedent of they got away with it. They got to try to change election laws after the fact to change the election outcome. And I know because I'm a former election lawyer, I understand the threat and I need your viewers to understand too because it's, it's really, I need support in both the legal battle and the organizing battle because we're doing this dual track. We're preparing for all eventualities.
- [10:48]
Ben
Where can they go find, where can our viewers find out more information?
- [10:51]
Justice Allison Riggs
So please go to rigsforourcourts.com that's four F O R our courts. There's a couple of things I need you to do on my website. One is I need you to look to see if anyone you know is on this list. So there's a tab on my website when you where you can search names. I need people to sign up for emails. Follow me on social media because literally these are some of the hardest voters to get in touch with because they are moving, they are in transit, they are. It's not going to even be necessarily the voter we get to. It's going to be the sister or the mother or the cousin. I mean, this is an, an electoral version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. And so your listeners are going to know someone who was a student studying abroad in North Carolina or as a military member who's maintained their residence in North Carolina, is a missionary on the mission field. Right. And so go to my website, make any donation you can. It's super helpful. Sign up for our emails and follow me on social media and check to see if anyone you know could be on this list so that we start making those connections now because next week the clock starts ticking. I'm fighting to make sure that clock doesn't even start. But if it does, we have to be ready and get these ballots cured in 30 days.
- [12:13]
Ben
You know, this is one of those stories that should be getting more attention than it is. It pops into the news when there's a ruling, and then it ebbs and flows based on that. It's why we created this network here, you know, to be able to highlight important stories that are at the heart of our democracy. And this is top of that list right now. So, Justice Riggs, thanks for all you're doing, fighting for real election integrity and making sure every vote really counts. And we appreciate everything you're doing. Thanks for sharing the message. Thank you, everybody. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas substack for ad. Free articles, reports, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at midasplus.
- [12:59]
Justice Allison Riggs
Com.