RALEIGH, N.C. — Disputed ballots in the still unresolved 2024 race for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat must remain in the final count, a federal judge ruled late Monday, a decision that if upheld would result in an electoral victory for Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs.

U.S. District Judge Richard Myers agreed with Riggs and others who argued it would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution to carry out recent decisions by state appeals courts that directed the removal of potentially thousands of voter ballots deemed ineligible. Myers wrote that votes couldn’t be removed six months after Election Day without damaging due process and equal protection rights of the affected residents.

Myers also ordered the State Board of Elections to certify results that after two recounts showed Riggs the winner — by just 734 votes — over Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin. But the judge delayed his decision for seven days in case Griffin wants to appeal the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The board “must not proceed with implementation of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court’s orders, and instead must certify the results of the election for (the seat) based on the tally at the completion of the canvassing period,” wrote Myers, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump.

More than 5.5 million ballots were cast in what has been the nation’s last undecided race from November’s general election. Griffin filed formal protests after the election in hopes that removing ballots he said were unlawfully cast would flip the outcome to him.

Griffin’s legal team was reviewing Myers’ order Monday night and evalulating the next steps, Griffin campaign spokesperson Paul Shumaker wrote in an email.

Riggs was more assured in her statement: “Today, we won. I‘m proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina’s Supreme Court Justice.”

Griffin wanted Myers to leave undisturbed the state courts’ decisions, which also directed that most of the voters with otherwise ineligible ballots get 30 days to provide identifying information for their race choices to remain in the tally.

Riggs, the state Democratic Party and some affected voters said Griffin was trying to change the 2024 election outcome after the fact by removing ballots cast by voters who complied with voting rules as they were written last fall.

Myers wrote that Griffin’s formal protests after the election, which were rejected by the State Board of Elections, constituted efforts to make retroactive changes to the voting laws that would arbitrarily disenfranchise only the voters who were targeted by Griffin. Griffin’s challenges over photo ID only covered at most six Democratic-leaning counties in the state.

“You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” Myers wrote in a 68-page order.

“Permitting parties to ‘upend the set rules’ of an election after the election has taken place can only produce ‘confusion and turmoil'” that “‘threatens to undermine public confidence in the federal courts, state agencies, and the elections themselves,'” he added while citing other cases.

Democrats and voting rights groups raised alarm about Griffin’s efforts. They called it an attack on democracy that would serve as a road map for the GOP to reverse future election results in other states. The state Republican Party said Griffin was seeking to ensure that only legal votes are counted.

BOSTON — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday repeatedly invoked the Constitution and said it is what “binds us all together” after receiving the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Pence received the award for his refusal to go along with President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election. The award recognizes Pence “for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021,” the JFK Library Foundation said.

“To forge a future together, we have to find common ground,” Pence said. “I hope in some small way my presence here tonight is a reminder that whatever differences we may have as Americans, the Constitution is the common ground on which we stand. It’s what binds us across time and generations. …. It’s what makes us one people.”

His comments came hours after an interview with Trump aired in which he was asked whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens both deserve due process as laid out in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. Trump was noncommittal.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said when pressed in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker. It was taped Friday at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida and aired Sunday.

Pence never mentioned Trump during his 10-minute speech but made several references to the Trump administration.

Referencing what he called “these divided times, in these anxious days,” he acknowledged that he probably had differences with the Democrats in the room but also with his own Republican Party “on spending, tariffs and my belief that America is the leader of the free world and must stand with Ukraine until the Russian invasion is repelled and a just and lasting peace is secured.”

Trump pressured Pence to reject election results from swing states where the Republican president falsely claimed the vote was marred by fraud. Pence refused, saying he lacked such authority. When a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.” Pence was whisked away by Secret Service agents, narrowly avoiding a confrontation with the rioters.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump wrote at the time on X, formerly Twitter, as rioters moved through the Capitol and Pence was in hiding with his family, aides and security detail inside the building.

Pence rejected the Secret Service’s advice that he leave the Capitol, staying to continue the ceremonial election certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory once rioters were cleared.

In describing his role, Pence told the audience that “by God’s grace I did my duty that day to support the peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution of the United States of America.”

The Profile in Courage Award, named for a book Kennedy published in 1957 before he became president, honors public officials who take principled stands despite the potential political or personal consequences. Previous recipients of the award include former Presidents Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford.

Pence has emerged as one of the few Republicans willing to take on the Trump administration.

His political action group, Advancing American Freedom, campaigned against the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the nation’s health agencies. He’s delivered speeches urging the president to stand with longtime foreign allies and posted an article he penned more than a decade ago on the limits of presidential power after Trump claimed that, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”