Emergency hearing scheduled in North Carolina voter case

RALEIGH, N.C. – An emergency hearing has been scheduled in federal court on the NAACP’s attempt to stop several county boards of election in North Carolina from removing people from the voter rolls through challenges filed by individuals.

The hearing about the lawsuit filed Monday will be held at 9 a.m. Wednesday in federal court in Winston-Salem.

The NAACP’s lawsuit zeroes in on Cumberland, Moore and Beaufort counties, where thousands of voters’ names have been challenged. In most cases, mail sent to an address is returned as undeliverable, which county boards can accept as evidence that the voter no longer lives there.

The National Voter Registration Act prohibits boards of election from clearing voter names from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election. But state law doesn’t place the same restraint on individual challenges.

The director of the State Board of Elections says the federal law hasn’t been interpreted to ban individual challenges.