An estimated 500 people came out in freezing temperatures Monday afternoon in Asheville’s Pack Square to protest a losing Republican candidate’s attempts to disqualify more than 65,000 votes statewide — including more than 2,000 in Buncombe County — in an effort to overturn November’s election of Democrat Allison Riggs to the state Supreme Court.
Two official recounts confirmed that Jefferson Griffin, the Republican challenger, narrowly lost to Riggs for a seat on the state’s highest court. Griffin and the state Republican Party have filed multiple lawsuits and requests to stop official certification of Riggs’s victory. Still, more than three months after the election, Griffin refuses to concede. He is appealing his case to the state Supreme Court, which has a 5-to-2 Republican majority.
Griffin’s latest challenge argues that thousands of absentee ballots filed by military members and their families in Buncombe and three other heavily Democratic counties were counted unlawfully.
