The North Carolina NAACP is suing the state elections board and three county elections boards over typical Republican voter suppression tactics—technically, violating the Voting Rights Act and National Voter Registration Act.
In one of the counties, Beaufort County, black voters make up 65 percent of the challenges even though the county is 26 percent African American, according to the complaint. The registrations of 138 voters were challenged based on a mailing campaign sent by one of the challengers, Ricky Radcliffe, when he was running for mayor in 2015, according to the lawsuit. The list of challenged voters was made up of individuals who were supposedly sent the mailers and they were returned as undeliverable, the complaint said.
In Moore County, 400 voters' registrations were challenged in a similar fashion by a single individual, N. Carol Wheeldon, according to the lawsuit. Her mailers said explicitly “DO NOT FORWARD," the complaint said. Undeliverable mailers also led to nearly 4,000 voters being put on a challenged list in Cumberland County, the lawsuit alleged, and the county board of elections sought to move forward with the process to remove about 3,500 of them from the rolls.
According to the lawsuit, many of the voters didn’t receive a required notification that their registration was being challenged, and:
In the cases highlighted by the NAACP lawsuit, oftentimes, the voters whose registrations were put on the challenge lists had not moved out of the county where they are registered, had voted in past elections and intended to vote in November's election.
The NAACP-NC lawsuit is seeking to ensure that the voters’ registrations are restored and that they are able to vote without problems.
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