This is not the first time that North Carolina Republicans have created a firestorm after losing a statewide race. This is the party that, after losing the governorship and other statewide positions last fall, moved in the GOP-controlled North Carolina legislature to formally disempower Governor Stein and other Democrats.

But what’s happening now with the North Carolina court race raises serious concerns about the future of judicial elections in that state and others across the country.

State court races have grown increasingly contentious, and expensive, in recent years. Why? Because they matter. The 2023 flipping of control of the officially nonpartisan Wisconsin Supreme Court, from a 4–3 conservative majority to a 4–3 progressive majority, has already transformed debates in the state about everything from gerrymandering to voting rights, abortion rights and labor rights. Democrats and Republicans nationwide have come to understand that winning court contests is just as important as winning races for legislative seats and executive-branch posts.

But what happens if Republicans—inspired by Trump’s “big lies” about past elections and disregard for democratic norms—decide not to accept election results they don’t like from court races and other contests? What happens if they use every avenue to undermine the process by “[challenging] the rules that were in place for elections and get votes retroactively discarded,” as Ann Webb, the policy director for Common Cause North Carolina, suggests?

The answer, says the policy analyst, is stark. “If there’s a never-ending process of challenging election rules and results after the fact,” says Webb, “our entire system could come to a standstill.”

The scenario is playing out right now.

Even as people across the United States and around the world watch Trump’s inauguration with deep concern, they should also be eying developments in North Carolina with wariness about what they portend for democracy.

At the root of the conflict is the fact that North Carolina had a close election result. That’s not uncommon in North Carolina or the rest of the country.

But what happened next is irregular—and unsettling.

While Riggs won by a mere 734 votes, Democrats were certain that her victory was secure after an official canvass of the numbers, and a pair of recounts—one a full review of machine counts, the other a “hand-to-eye” recount of a sampling of ballots from the state’s 100 counties, and both conducted by bipartisan observers following official mandates. All of these reviews confirmed the Democratic justice’s advantage. Indeed, as the Riggs campaign announced in early December, “The initial vote count confirmed Justice Riggs’ victory…and a statewide machine recount confirmed her win by the exact same margin. The sample hand recount, which also confirms her win, is the third and final count of votes.” Despite protests from her Republican opponent, Griffin, the North Carolina State Board of Elections determined that there was no justification for additional recounts and concludeded on December 10, “That recount showed Riggs with a 734-vote lead.”

That should have been the end of it.

But Republican partisans refused to accept the result. On January 7, the North Carolina Supreme Court’s Republican majority voted 5–1 (with Riggs recusing herself) to block the state’s elections board from certifying the results. Why? Because Griffin is pursuing an attempt to reject the ballots of 60,000 North Carolinians who legitimately cast ballots in the 2024 election. An analysis of the targeted ballots has determined that Black voters are twice as likely to be disqualified as white voters, and that young voters could also be disqualified at high rates.

“This is hugely dangerous for democracy in North Carolina,” says Webb.

For democracy in North Carolina, yes, but also for democracy in America. “If Republicans are successful in invalidating fair and legal votes past an election date like this, this will have broad implications across the county,” argues former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper.

Common Cause North Carolina, the North Carolina NAACP, the ACLU of North Carolina, and other civil rights and democracy groups have all decried the GOP move as a power grab by “a losing candidate [who] wants to throw out your ballots using desperate and outlandish legal theories, all in order to steal a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court.”

The analysis of the ballots targeted for protests by the Griffin campaign conducted by the Raleigh News & Observer discovered that most of the challenged votes were cast by Democrats or people who were not affiliated with either major party. In addition, it was clear that ballots cast by constituencies that have traditionally voted Democratic in North Carolina have seen disproportionately high levels of protests. For instance, the News & Observer “found that Black registered voters were twice as likely to have their votes challenged as white voters.” Another relevant finding: “Voters aged 18 to 25 were the largest age group among the challenged voters, accounting for about 23% of all protests, despite making up about 12 percent of the electorate.”

That’s a red flag, not just for North Carolina but for the whole of the United States.

“The eyes of the entire country are on this race because the implications of having free and fair elections that are being questioned and potentially overturned are devastating,” says former governor Cooper, who argues that this GOP attempt to disenfranchise enough voters to overturn an election result poses a threat “not just for Justice Riggs and the millions of North Carolinians who voted for her but for any election in the future.”