The battle for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat rages on

An unprecedented North Carolina appeals court ruling Friday teed up the state's GOP-majority Supreme Court to again weigh in on a case that will determine whether Republicans further entrench their power on the state's highest court.

Why it matters: A three-judge panel on North Carolina's Court of Appeals ruled Friday that more than 60,000 North Carolinians who voted in the 2024 race for state Supreme Court will have to prove their ballot should count.

• The move was a win for the Republican candidate in the race, Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin, who is seeking to invalidate tens of thousands of ballots in an effort to unseat his opponent, Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs.
• The case now goes back to the Supreme Court, whose ruling could flip the results of the race and deliver Republicans a 6-1 majority on the bench.

The latest: The Supreme Court issued a stay Monday on the appeals court's order while it considers whether to take up the case.

• That means that the N.C. State Board of Elections will not yet have to notify tens of thousands of voters that they'll have 15 business days to "cure" their ballot in order for it to count in last year's Supreme Court race, as ordered by the appeals court last week.
• It's a temporary win for Riggs and the state's Board of Elections, but Riggs also noted in her petition for the stay that Griffin did not oppose a temporary stay while the high court considers the case.

The big picture: North Carolina's Supreme Court race is the only 2024 election in the country that remains undecided, and all eyes have been on the state as the case has pinballed through the courts for six months.

• Democrats maintain that the effort to throw out tens of thousands of ballots after the election is a "test case for the right-wing playbook," the state's Democratic party wrote in a fundraising email over the weekend.
• The state GOP maintains that the case is about election integrity, though not all Republicans agree with that sentiment.

State of play: Two recounts have confirmed that Griffin trails Riggs by 734 votes. The slim margin means that if Griffin succeeds in throwing even a fraction of the ballots in the race out, the results could swing in his favor.

• The appeals court ordered that the ballots from overseas voters who have never lived in the U.S. — one of the groups whose ballots Griffin is challenging — should be thrown out, thought that number is not large enough to sway the election.
• Griffin did, however, challenge the ballots of Black voters at twice the rate of white voters, a News & Observer analysis found.
• Meanwhile, Democrats and unaffiliated voters also made up the majority of those whose ballots were challenged, per the N&O, while Republicans made up just 22%.

Of note: The State Board of Elections noted Friday after the appeals court ruling that any voter who is concerned their registration is incomplete or not up to date can submit an updated voter registration form. Here's how.