Private individuals and groups recently challenged the voter registrations under a process allowed by state law. | Getty Judge orders purged voter registrations restored in North Carolina

A federal judge has ordered officials in three North Carolina counties to restore several thousand voters dropped from the rolls in the past three months after mailings to their home addresses were returned as undeliverable.

About 4,000 voters in those counties had their registrations canceled recently after private individuals and groups challenged the registrations under a process allowed by state law.


U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs said the use of that process to remove large numbers of voters amounted to the kind of "systematic" purging of voter rolls that federal law prohibits within 90 days of an election.

At a hearing Wednesday in Winston-Salem, Biggs called the challenge process "insane," according to local news reports.

"Based on the evidence discussed above, the Court concludes that the County Boards’ reliance on a single mailing that was returned undeliverable as the basis for sustaining a challenge, resulting in the County Boards systematically purging between 3,500 and 4,000 voters from registration rolls within 90 days of the General Election, was a likely violation of" federal law," Biggs wrote in an opinion issued late Friday afternoon.

The judge's order applies only in the counties named as defendants in the suit: Beaufort, Cumberland and Moore.

The case that led to Friday's order was filed by the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP. The Justice Department filed a notice of support for the suit.

Biggs is an appointee of President Barack Obama.