Judge orders canceled NC voters to be reinstated

A federal judge ruled Friday that voters whose registrations were canceled as a result of North Carolina’s “individual challenge law” must be restored to the voter rolls, according to CNN.

{mosads}”The court concludes that the balance of the equities and public interest factors weigh decidedly in favor of protecting eligible voters who are being removed from the voter rolls,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Briggs. 

Lawyers for the NAACP had argued that thousands of voter registrations in three counties were canceled after a small group of people challenged them based “exclusively on mass mailings that were returned as undeliverable.”

The judge granted a preliminary injunction in favor of the civil rights group Friday.

“The judge’s order today ensures that voters improperly challenged in three North Carolina counties will be restored to the voter rolls before Election Day,” Allison Riggs, a lawyer for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, told CNN.

Kim Westbrook Strach, executive director of the state’s board of elections, said in a statement that her office “is working quickly to establish the procedures necessary to comply with the court order between now and Election Day.”

The law in North Carolina allows any voter in a certain country to challenge the registration of any other voter in that county.

Some 4,500 registrations were canceled due to challenges in Beaufort, Moore and Cumberland counties.