The voter challenges in Beaufort County — and several other counties — have gotten the attention of at least one civil-rights group.

The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, in an Oct. 17 letter to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, contends the challenges in Beaufort County, Moore County and Cumberland County are illegal. In a letter signed by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP chapter, a portion reads: “These systematic removals are prohibited by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (‘NVRA’) and violate North Carolina voter registration laws.”

The state NAACP chapter petitioned the state elections board to instruct each of the state’s 100 county boards of elections to “cease from this unlawful purging of registered voters from their rolls, and to restore the voters who have been improperly removed.”

Josh Lawson, general counsel for the state board, responded to the letter, which was sent to him by Irv Joyner, a law professor at North Carolina Central University’s School of Law. In that response, Lawson wrote: “To the extent your correspondence raises concerns over removals following individualized determinations entered following challenge proceedings under Article 8 of Chapter 163, such removals are not part of North Carolina’s systematic list maintenance program and are not, therefore, of the type barred under the NVRA. State law continues to sanction individualized challenges up to and including Election Day.”

Lawson’s response notes that an appeal of a county board of elections’ decision does not go to the state board. Instead, an appeal would be heard by the Superior Court of the county where the local board of elections is located.

In a subsequent letter signed by Barber and addressed to Kim Westbrook Strach, executive director of the state elections board, the state NAACP chapter threatened litigation if the state elections officials did not meet with NAACP representatives to “resolve” the issue before the Beaufort County Board of Elections began conducting hearings on voter challenges. Those hearings began Monday.

In its conclusion, the letter reads: “North Carolina is engaged in continuing violations of the NRVA.”

As of Monday afternoon, there was no indication the NAACP had filed a lawsuit.

In Moore County, one challenger, N. Carol Wheeldon, submitted about 400 voter challenges, on the basis that first-class mail sent to those individuals’ addresses were returned to the sender. After a hearing Oct. 14, the Moore County Board of Elections removed nearly all of the challenged voters from the voter rolls.

In Cumberland County since 2014, nearly 3,000 voters were challenged. Some, if not all, of the challenges appear to stem from returned mail from mass mailings, according to the NAACP.

Attempts to reach the State Board of Elections and NAACP on Monday for comment were unsuccessful.