North Carolina’s process for challenging voters’ registration seems to harken to a bygone era when fewer safeguards were in place, a federal judge said Wednesday as she presided over a lawsuit that alleges voters are being purged unfairly.
Lawyers for North Carolina countered that state data shows only a sliver of names have been removed from county rolls in the past two years – fewer than 7,000 statewide out of 6.8 million registered voters.
The comments came during an emergency hearing over NAACP allegations that at least three counties purged voter rolls through a process disproportionately targeting blacks….
“This sounds like something that was put together in 1901,” she told lawyers for the state.
The judge also said she was “horrified” by the number of removals in Cumberland County, which accounted for the majority of the statewide total.
“It almost looks like a cattle call, the way people are being purged,” she told county attorney Rick Moorefield.