Jefferson Griffin Wants to Discard my Ballot—and 60,000 Others

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Good morning, readers.

Jefferson Griffin’s far-fetched scheme to throw out 60,000 votes from November’s state supreme court election and reverse the results in his favor has become a national story, putting North Carolina under a spotlight for all the wrong reasons. 

As it happens, I am one of the thousands of eligible voters whose ballots Griffin is trying to discard, on the grounds that we don’t have a social security number or driver’s license on file with the state board of elections. And as I read the news and commentary flooding my feeds over the past week, I was left with a couple of simple questions: did I do something wrong to end up on Griffin’s list, and is there anything I should be doing now?

So I called up the Durham County Board of Elections for answers. An elections worker named Debra looked me up in her database and reassured me there was nothing wrong with my registration. The system has trouble with compound names, she told me, and that’s likely the reason it couldn’t verify my social security number.

“You are a duly registered voter here in Durham County,” Debra explained. “There’s nothing that you need to do to fix your registration.”

Ren Larson, a reporter at The Assembly, crunched the numbers and found that one in 11 voters on Griffin’s list have hyphenated or compound last names. Seems as good a reason as any to scrap their ballots and overturn an election.

Read the full story for the latest on Griffin’s election challenge (and check the list yourself). Have a good Thursday.

 —Chloe

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