Speaker 1: What's going on.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It
is heard live every day from noon to three on
WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content
like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily
show prep with all the links, become a patron, go
to dpeakclendarshow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button.
Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet.
And again, thank you so much for your support. So
I mentioned this topic briefly when we were talking to
Ap Dylan from the North State Journal in the first hour,
and so we're going to spend some time on it
this hour. Which is the never ending race for our
state Supreme Court seat. It's been contested. I think we
are now, like I think I saw Center Square reported,
I think it's like one hundred and fifty one days
since the election and there's still no decline aired winner
because of the lawsuits that have been bouncing all around.
And we had a ruling on Friday from a three
judge panel of Pellate Court judges, two Republicans, one Democrat,
and the Republicans weighed in in favor of the Republican
candidate Jefferson Griffin and the Democrat dissenting in the opinion
and weighing in in favor of Alison Riggs, the incumbent
state Supreme Court justice, also a Democrat. So here's how
Kyle ing Gramover at the Charlotte Observer reported it. In
a split decision, a panel of judges on the North
Carolina Court of Appeals ruled Friday that tens of thousands
of votes cast in the contested twenty twenty four Supreme
Court race should be recounted and verified, potentially flipping the
election results, which we actually don't know if it would
flip the result or not. We we don't because if
they you're going to hear the word cure, which just
means fix. They have to that people if you go
in and cast a provisional ballot, for example, right you
show up to vote and they're like, oh, you're not
on our list, Like, well, I should be on the list.
They're like, okay, well, here's a provisional ballot. You fill
it out, and then we we verify that it's actually you. You
were supposed to vote in this correct precinct, or maybe
you didn't have your ID so you got like you
got like a week or something. I forget what the
period is, but you have like a week or so
to come in and show your ID at the Board
of Elections and then that cures the deficiency that you
had that forced you to vote a provisional ballot. Okay,
So when you hear the word cure, that's what they're
talking about. That these sixty thousand plus voters who have
problems with their registration and well they're going to get
according to this ruling, they're going to get fifteen business days,
so essentially three weeks right Monday through Friday, they're going
to get fifteen business days to cure the problems with
their registration. Now, a lot of people may not do that.
They may not take the time to go to the
Board of Elections or whatever. You know, they're not going
to take the steps to cure the ballot, in which
case then the vote would be thrown out.
Speaker 1: That's the idea. So that could.
Speaker 2: Turn the election because the election was only won by
Alison Riggs, the incumbent Democrat, by like seven hundred and
thirty four votes. So if you're able to toss out
you know, a thousand of the sixty thousand and they
were all for her, then yeah, you could conceivably flip
this race. So there are three main areas. The Never residents,
which I've talked about before, the sixty thousand voters challenged
because of deficiencies in their registration forms, and then the
lack of a photo ID for military, and overseas ballots
that came in. And I've got the breakdown here someplace
of the numbers of ballots that we're talking about someplace, well.
Speaker 1: I'll find it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter, So back to the Charlotte Observer story,
because like these the overseas ballot one is like a
thousand or twelve hundred, I want to say, and then
the never residence it's fewer. I think it's like two
hundred or something. I forget what the exact breakdown is.
But the biggest, the biggest chunk is the sixty thousand
plus voters who had their eligibility challenged Byjefferson Griffin, the
Republican who is a sitting member of the Court of
Appeals who he had run then for the state Supreme
Court's and he was leading, remember he was leading on
election night by ten thousand votes or so, and then
when they count up all the provisional ballots in the
days after then he loses. That's a massive shift of
like ten to eleven thousand votes, Right Justice Allison Riggs.
She said she would appeal the ruling. The decision on
Friday comes nearly five months after the November election and
is unlikely to be unlikely to be the final step
in the contentious case, which has left North Carolina as
the only state in the country with an uncertified state
wide race. The ruling could be halted on appeal before
the cure period goes into effect. So after Griffin narrowly
lost his race two Rigs by seven hundred and thirty
four votes, he and the North Carolina Republican Party quickly
challenged the validity of tens of thousands of ballots on
untested legal grounds because the state board. Here's my takeaway,
I guess I should have said this at the outset.
My takeaway on this the Board of Elections has royally
screwed this up. Okay, that's the big headline for me.
Had they been doing the job that they were supposed
to be doing, this would not be in question. The
sixty thousand voters who have deficiencies in their registration would
have already been alerted to this. The rule that says,
and this is what it comes down to. When you
register to vote, you have to have some gov Code
number attached to you, okay, whether it's your Social Security
number or your driver's license okay. And if you don't
have either of those, then the Board of Election assigns
a number to you. And these sixty thousand voters they
don't have them. And this was a law that goes
back to two thousand and four. This is the Help
America Vote Act. Have a Remember they did this after
the Florida debacle in two thousand Bush v. Gore, right,
like that whole scandal and the hanging chads and we
didn't know who had won, and all of that scandal
then turned into the have a HAVA Help America Vote
Act in like two thousand and four, and the North
Carolina General Assembly adopted this rule and it was signed
by the governor, all Democrats. And yet the Board of
Elections apparently hasn't evor complied with.
Speaker 1: This stuff for these voters.
Speaker 2: So you got generally speaking, it's going to be mostly
I suspect people who have been voting in the state
for a long time. They've been voting in election after
election after election, never being told that their registration is
deficient somehow, never being told they have to fix this
when they should have been told you have to fix this.
In Friday's decision, Judge Toby Hampson, a Democrat, dissented from
the majority, noting that Griffin has not proven that any
of the challenged voters are actually ineligible, because they put
all of the burden of proof here basically on the
challenger on Jefferson Griffin. Here's a great idea. How about
making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway
in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the
mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're
celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan
a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for
a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal
spot for you where you can reconnect with your love
ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the
breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest,
their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of
the Blue Ridge Mountains centrally located between Asheville and the
entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the
perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local
attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi
Fi grills, outdoor tables, and your own private covered porch.
Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a
great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville
has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and
they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two
eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out
all there is to offer at Cabins Ofashville dot com
and make memories that'll last a lifetime. I read through
the Court of Appeals ruling not once, not twice, but
three times.
Speaker 1: I read through this thing.
Speaker 2: I read it once on the screen, and then when
I went back to because I wasn't going to print
out one hundred and twenty pages or whatever, it was
one o two actually, and I know that because the
dissenting opinion was like almost seventy pages. I'm like, this
seems like it's more than half, and it was it
was like sixty six pages of the one oh two
was the dissent from one guy and the majority opinion
from the two Republican judges that was like thirty something pages.
So regardless, I read through it three times. I have
highlighted only the important pieces. And I have to tell you,
number one, the Board of Elections has really messed this
all up. Okay, number one, but number two, some of
these arguments that the dissenting judge, the Democrat on the
Court of Appeals, some of the arguments that he lays
out are persuasive. They actually are persuasive. I'm gonna explain. First,
the case is going to go back to Wake County
Superior Court, which had ruled against Jefferson Griffin, the Republican,
back in February. From there, according to the Charlotte Observer,
the trial court was instructed to direct all one hundred
county boards of elections to quote expeditiously identify and notify
the challenged voters. Okay, so if you were one of
the sixty thousand plus whatever, you were supposed to be notified.
In a statement, Pat Gannon, a spokesman for the state
Board of Elections said that the agency will provide instructions
to the affected voters if the court order goes into
effect today, though there was a request for a stay
so or to the State Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: They went forward to the.
Speaker 2: Democrat judge Alison Riggs, who was on the Supreme Court,
but she's recused herself from this stuff on the Supreme Court,
so they've asked for a stay to stop this from starting,
because it's otherwise supposed to start I think at five
o'clock today. He also said that the order would only
affect voters' selections in the one race, the State Supreme
Court race.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: No other contest on your ballot is affected except the
one that's being litigated. However, the court's decision could be
halted before any of that happens, as Riggs is likely
to appeal to the State Supreme Court, as I said
she just did, since she has recused herself from this case.
Only six justices would hear the case, though, and if
it were to end in a three to three deadlock.
If that happens, then the most recent ruling of the
lower court prevails, and that would be the one from Friday.
From this three judge panel. Riggs has said that if
she loses at the state court level, she does intend
to return the case to the federal court. So we
are not anywhere close to this thing being done. It
is being used to fundraised not just by Riggs, but
by Democrats all across the country. In fact, the North
Carolina House Democrat leader Robert Reeves, Oh, this is the
state House, I should say, but the chair of the
Democrat National Committee has also put out a statement on it.
But the state House guy, Robert Reeves, he said, we
cannot mince words.
Speaker 1: At this point.
Speaker 2: The North Carolina Republican Party is one step closer to
stealing an election in broad daylight, which I think that's
kind of insurrectiony, just going by the old standards. The
Court of Appeals ruled that the voters challenged for registration
and ID issues would be given an opportunity to cure
their ballots to fix them. However, they ruled this is
the Court of Appeals. They ruled that the never residents
who were explicitly granted voting eligibility more than a decade
ago in a bipartisan state law, that they are ineligible
to vote. The Elections Board spokesman Pat Gannon said that
any voter who has concerned their registration information is incomplete
should submit an updated voter registration form. Okay, so let
me go over to the let me go over to
the ruling. So this is from the majority ruling. This
is the two Republicans.
Speaker 1: They write.
Speaker 2: On November nineteenth, Griffin filed six categories of election protests
with the county boards of Elections in every one of
North Carolina's one hundred counties. Three of the six issues
basically are relevant to this appeal. The first is the
incomplete voter registration, in which Griffin challenges ballots that were
cast by voters who are not properly registered because they
purportedly have never provided either their driver's license numbers or
the last four digits of their Social Security numbers with
their registration.
Speaker 1: That's the first group.
Speaker 2: The second category lack of photo ID for overseas voters.
Griffin challenged ballots of certain citizens living overseas and of
certain members of the military, their spouses and dependents, which
were cast pursuant to state law, but failed to include
a copy of their photo ID. But here's the thing,
reading the statute, I don't think they actually have to.
I think it's a separate law. This is what the
Democrat judge pointed out. All right, So spring is here
a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings,
anniversaries and especial days for mom and dad. Your family's
making memories that are going to land to lifetime. But
let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments
from days gone by? Are they hidden away on old
VCR tapes, eight millimeter films, photos slides? Are they preserved?
Because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate,
losing the magic of yesterday. At Creative Video, they help
you protect what matters most. Their expert team digitizes your
cherished family moments and transfers them onto a USB drive,
freezing them in time so they can be enjoyed for
generations to come. I urge you do not wait until
it's too late this spring. Celebrate your past. Visit Creative
Video today and let them preserve your legacy with the
love and care that it deserves. Creative Video Preserving Family
Memories since nineteen ninety seven. Located in mint Hill, just
off four eighty five Mail orders are accepted to get
all the details that createavideo dot com. So this is
from the judge dissenting on the Court of Appeals three
judge panel. He's a Democrat, but he goes over all
of the issues that have been raised and he's you know,
he is on board with the Democrat Alison Riggs and
he does not think this case should be preceding any
further or that Jefferson Griffin has made his arguments.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: Regarding the overseas ballots, these are the This is the
voter identification of you know, photo ID. When you are
mailing absentee ballots. Now you have to have a picture
that you send in with your ballot. Okay, Now, for
the military people overseas, maintaining uniformity is key to accomplishing
the stated goals of the original legislation on this it
said quote. Without uniformed state legislation, military and overseas voters
will continue to confront a panoply of diverging voting requirements.
This lack of uniformity complicates any federal effort, such as
the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act or the UOCAVA.
Speaker 1: Or as I call it the Yuakava.
Speaker 2: This is meant to assist voters to overcome major obstacles
they may face. Variations across states both complicate the procedures
developed under the Yuakava to help overseas the military voters,
and it makes it more difficult for consular officials, the
US military, and non governmental voting assistance groups to give
standard advice to all.
Speaker 1: Of the voters living overseas.
Speaker 2: So they created a uniform set of procedures for all
states to adopt as a whole in order to reduce
infusion for military members and overseas voters. The purpose of
the Act can only be achieved through uniform state legislation.
The General Assembly chose to participate in achieving this common
goal by enacting the model legislation as Article twenty one A.
That is a separate statute than your absentee balloting if
you are not overseas. It's a different section of the
law requiring North Carolina residents to submit photo identification when
residents of other states that are also participating in this.
Speaker 1: Yule Kava.
Speaker 2: Requiring our residents to submit photo ID when other states
don't require it creates the exact lack of uniformity the
legislation is intended to eliminate. So, in other words, you
have a whole bunch of states that don't require photo
ID for their absentee ballots, and because of that, we
shouldn't be requiring it either, because we want to have uniformity.
But wait a minute, don't a majority of the states
have it now have voter ID or I don't know,
do they have it for absentee balloting. Maybe they don't
have it for absentee balloting, maybe it's just in person.
In accordance with this goal of creating uniformity, the General
Assembly codified the procedures for military and overseas ballots separately
from those for domestic absentee ballots. And when the General
Assembly modifies one statute and not another, we do not
infer that it intended the change to apply to both
of the laws. That makes sense, right, you have the
existing absentee ballot law, and then you come in with
this other law. And then when you're changing one or
the other, they're not applying buying the same changes to
both at the same time. They've never said that by
enacting two separate statutes, the legislature clearly intended that there
would be two distinct standards. I find this to be
This is a rational logical argument. Voters are participated in
this election were entitled to rely on the guidance of
the Board of Elections, even if Article twenty imposes a
photo ID requirement on Article twenty one A voters. That's
the other statute for overseas people. Those overseas people submitted
their ballots in accordance with all the rules and procedures
that they were told right the Board of Elections told
them that this is the way that you're supposed to vote.
And if the Board of Elections was wrong about that,
you don't penalize the voters who were innocent and were
following the rules that they were advised on. Assuming the
board made a mistake in communicating those requirements, rejecting the
ballots renders all military and overseas voters who cast their
ballot in Guildford County disenfranchised through no fault of their own.
It would have been effectively impossible for these citizens who
were qualified to vote and properly registered to cast a
valid vote because the proper procedures were not available to them.
And then there are the never residents or the inherited residents.
These are people who have parents working overseas, so they're
living overseas, but they are domiciled in North Carolina. That's like,
that's their home state. They were in North Carolina that
they got a job transfer or whatever. They're working overseas
and they're over there for a long time, and they
have kids that have never been in North Carolina. And
then those kids grow up, they turn eighteen years old,
where do they register to vote? They are American citizens.
Where do those kids register to vote when they turn eighteen?
That's the question. Those are the never residents right now.
The law says that they are assumed to be inherited
right from their parents North Carolinians, and so they would
register to vote at that address that their parents had
in North Carolina. And that's who's gotten challenged here. All right,
If you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too, And you've probably heard me
say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because
it's how you detect media bias. Which is why I've
been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and
it's a website and it combines news from around the
world in one place, so you can compare coverage and
verify information. You could check it out at check dot ground,
dot new news slash pete. I put the link in
the podcast description too. I started using ground News a
few months ago and more recently chose to work with
them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly
how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot
feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left
and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot
news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get
fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan
to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then
not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground
News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So
the dissenting judge Hampson Democrat, he says, contrary to the petitioner,
that's Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for the State Court
of Appeals, says, it is not the Board of Elections
that has permitted inherited residents to vote in our elections.
Speaker 1: So this is the people who have no.
Speaker 2: Been in North Carolina have never expressed an intent to
return to North Carolina. Because they were kids, they were
born overseas. They are an American citizen because they're born
to their parents who are there on work related whatever.
And they turn eighteen, they can register to vote. Where
do they vote? What state do they vote in? And
so they according to our statutes, the General Assembly enacted
the law that allows these individuals to vote in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: As a general rule, the domicile of every person at
his birth is the domicile of the person on whom
he is legally dependent. The petitioner Griffin cites no authority,
and I know of none, says the judge in support
of his bare assertion that a child's domicile of origin
expires when they turn eighteen. So that's the argument. Essentially,
the Griffin is making that if your kid your domicile
of origin, you know, you were born in North Carolina,
your parents then move overseas to work, that somehow or another,
that that expires when you turn eighteen. But he offers
no support, no evidence to justify this position. He says,
the claim is unsupported. It is also antithetical to our
longstanding consistent understanding of what a domicile is. He says
one acquires a domicile of origin at birth, and that
domicile continues until a new one is acquired. Those who
did not obtain domicile by birth may still be domiciled
in North Carolina by operation of law. A domicile by
operation of law is one which the law determines or
attributes to a person without regard to his intention or
the place where he is actually living. The majority the
two Republican judges on the Court of Appeals makes the
unfounded assertion that these voters have never indicated they intend
to live in this state. This willfully misses the point
these voters are simply not required to make any such indication.
The majority effectively invents a new requirement for this group
to fit its own agenda and gives them no opportunity
to satisfy it. The voters in this group check the
box on a card indicating I am a US citizen
living outside the country and I have never lived in
the United States. That's the question they're asked on the form,
and they checked the box. No one's asked them, do
you intend to come back to North Carolina. It's not asked,
So how do you know that they don't tend to return?
No one, including the petitioner or the majority, has any
idea whatsoever. How many of these voters would have selected
an option indicating that they also intend to live in
North Carolina had that question been presented, But it wasn't.
So again, problem with the forms.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Further, the majority's perspective entirely upends our long standing precedent
regarding domicile. Again, although an adult may not inherit domicile,
a child clearly does, and a child retains that domicile
until they affirmatively establish a new one. Right, So you
turn eighteen, you registered a vote, still living at home
with mom and dad, and your home is in the
UK because your mom and dad work for some company
that's got an operation there. He said, merely living somewhere
is not enough to establish domicile. And this is true.
This is true. For example, when I started working up
in Asheville, I wasn't sure if that radio gig was
going to last a long time, because you know, it's
a radio gig, and so so I was.
Speaker 1: I was going up there.
Speaker 2: I rented a little apartment and I kept my voter
registration here at the property I owned with my wife,
and she continued to work here, and I would drive
up on you know, Sunday night or Monday morning, I
would do the show. I would stay in the apartment,
and then I would drive home. So I never registered
to vote in Asheville. I shouldn't say never, because I
eventually did, but after we sold the house in Charlotte
and then I got fired. But but like that's the
that's the way you do it. It's the place you
intend to return. And so you can reside someplace, but
not that's not your domicile. More to the point, the
General Assembly enacted legislation that, by its plane language, guarantees
the right of children and dependents of North Carolinians living
abroad to vote in our eline.
Speaker 1: So this is state law.
Speaker 2: So I'm glad that they hashed this thing out in
the courts. But this seems to be pretty straightforward that
there is a deficiency in the law and in the forms,
and so it's going to get it's going to get appealed.
Because this judge that I just read from, he did
not win. That was the dissenting opinion. And then there
was the big issue for like the sixty thousand people,
was whether or not they were notified. There was a
big problem with this, like how did they get notified?
So the Griffin campaign and the Republican Party sent out
like postcards to people, to the sixty thousand people and
notified them that your vote may not be counted in
this race. And then they had one of those little
QR you know codes, those those little squares with all
the crazy digital black dots and stuff all over it.
And so you scan that and then that takes you
to a site where it's got all of the complaints
and voter files and all of this, and what rigs
and the Democrats and this dissenting judge argued was that
that's not a way to notify people because it looks
like a junk mail. It's a postcard, and you're relying
on people to use a QR code and they may
not have a cell phone, they may not know what
a QR code is. So I ask you, if you
got a random piece of mail from the Democrat Party
and it said scan this QR code to find out
if your vote's going to count, would you scan that?
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I throw it away?
Speaker 2: And so that's the argument that this judge lays out
as to why a lot of these voters of the
sixty thousand may not have thought it was a legitimate
thing for them to look now the Republican side and
they're like, hey, the county boards of elect should have
been sending this stuff out. They should have been notifying
these people that their ballots were deficient or their registrations
were deficient. They had twenty years to fix this problem,
and they were warned about it before the election through litigation,
so they knew this was a problem, and they knew
about it for a long time. This is what I mean, Like,
the list maintenance aspect at the board of Elections has
been just a dumpster fire for my entire career here,
my entire adult life in North Carolina, going back to
nineteen ninety nine. Here, it seems like this kind of
stuff has always been a problem, and like, if you
want people to have faith and confidence in the system,
you've got to do the proper list maintenance.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing you need to do. All right,
that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
the show without your support and the support of the
businesses that advertise on the podcast you'd like, please support
them too and tell them you heard it here. You
can also become a patron at my Patreon page or
go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much
for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.