Our man in North Carolina Lex Alexander on the state Supreme Court election that finally ended with a Republican concession. How normal is that?

That’s all from me.

-Adrastos

America’s last unresolved 2024 election ended Wednesday morning when Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin conceded to incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs in the race for a seat on the N.C. Supreme Court. Riggs will be certified the winner by 734 votes out of millions cast statewide, although Republicans will still have a majority on the court.

Griffin conceded after a U.S. District Court judge ruled Monday that Griffin’s attempt to cast out more than 60,000 ballots was bullshit. The judge ordered the N.C. State Board of Elections to certify the results.

The judge said essentially the same thing I’ve been saying: Griffin was trying to change the election rules after the voting had already taken place, and the law says you can’t do that.

Griffin remains a judge on the Republican-controlled N.C. Court of Appeals. That’s a damn shame, because after all his plotting to steal a state Supreme Court seat, nobody is going to believe that he can be fair and objective anymore, if they ever believed it in the first place.

What the concession doesn’t do is affect the Republicans’ Board of Elections hijinks.

In 2024, when Republicans still held a veto-proof majority in the legislature, they voted to shift the power to pick State Board of Elections members from the governor to the state auditor – and never mind that the state auditor doesn’t oversee elections in any other state. What mattered was that the new auditor was a Republican.

The auditor, Dave Boliek, reappointed one Republican and appointed two other Republicans to spots on the five-member board. (He’ll appoint two Democrats from a list of nominees that the state Democratic Party submits.) The new Republican majority is likely to fire the current elections director and replace her with a Republican.

Democrats have sued to stop this transition as unconstitutional, but I have no doubt that, win or lose, Republicans will try something like this in other states. That’s because since Bill Clinton ousted George H.W. Bush in 1992, Republicans have believed that there’s no such thing as a legitimately elected Democrat. And that’s where we find ourselves today.

Still, this is a big win for the good guys, and with any luck it’ll make Republicans think twice about trying to steal any more elections.