Disputed North Carolina race offers playbook for beaten candidates, experts warn

Observers say candidates who lose elections by narrow margins could copy Republican effort to have votes tossed

A disputed North Carolina state supreme court race that took nearly six months to resolve revealed a playbook for future candidates who lose elections to retroactively challenge votes, observers warn, but its ultimate resolution sent a signal that federal courts are unlikely to support an effort to overturn the results of an election.

Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes last November out of around 5.5m cast. But for months afterwards, Griffin waged an aggressive legal fight to get 65,000 votes thrown out after the election, even though those voters followed all of the rules election officials had set in advance.