A controversial North Carolina judge’s refusal to concede and a resurfaced photo of him in a Confederate uniform raise questions about election integrity and the enduring legacy of the Lost Cause.
Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican who lost his November race for the North Carolina Supreme Court, has been making headlines for refusing to concede for five months. Adding fuel to the fire, a 2001 photograph has surfaced showing Griffin wearing a Confederate uniform at a fraternity party during his time as a student at the University of North Carolina . Griffin insists that the photo “does not represent the person I am today.
” If he truly no longer supports the Lost Cause, a mythology that glorifies the Confederate forces that attacked the Union, then he should also abandon the futile pursuit of election subversion. \Incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, the Democrat in the race, won the election by 734 votes. However, by challenging 65,000 ballots cast in November, Griffin persists in attempting to diminish the electorate after the fact in an effort to overturn the outcome in his favor. A Friday ruling by a three-judge panel on the Republican-controlled appeals court—on which Griffin recused himself—sided with Griffin, deciding 2-1 that the 65,000 voters whose eligibility Griffin challenges should have 15 business days to prove their right to vote. But the North Carolina Supreme Court intervened on Monday with a stay against the appeals court ruling. \We hope this is more than a temporary pause and that the Republican majority on the state's highest court agrees with the judge who dissented from Friday's appeals court ruling. That dissenting judge argued that Friday's ruling amounts to “changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes,” and rightly stated that “an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution.” If the appeals court ruling is upheld, a portion of 65,000 North Carolina voters will see their votes effectively erased. Confederates lost the Civil War, but as many historians of Reconstruction have pointed out, the South won the culture war. Consider that Griffin, then a college student, was proudly posing in Confederate grays 136 years after that side surrendered at Appomattox. While the specific myths of the Lost Cause have evolved over time, the core motivation remains the same: Lies about the past are used to help those in power maintain their grip in the present. Historic voter turnout in North Carolina in 2008 helped propel Barack Obama to the White House, and since then, the party that lost that race has been pushing the myth of “voter fraud.
Election Integrity Lost Cause Confederate Voter Suppression North Carolina
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