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(Photo: Special to the Citizen-Times)

ASHEVILLE Asheville Tea Party challenged 257 voter registrations in Buncombe County on Thursday.

The group said the registrations are for people who no longer live at addresses shown in voting records.

Group Chairman Jane Bilello said it does not appear that anyone whose registration is being challenged voted this year.

She said the group, working with the Raleigh-based Voter Integrity Project, is asking that the registrations be removed so that someone who wanted to vote fraudulently could not pass themselves off as one of the people registered in order to vote in a future election.

A voter ID requirement is scheduled to go into effect in the state in 2016, although it is being challenged in court.

This is the groups second effort to have registrations purged from county rolls.

A previous one earlier this year was controversial. The League of Women Voters of Asheville-Buncombe County found that all the challenged registrations belonged to voters in 11 precincts in the city with significant populations of low-income people and African-Americans.

Asheville Tea Partys effort had the effect of intimidating voters, a league official said at the time, and it was later learned that many of those challenged were registered as living at a homeless shelter.

People involved in the challenges said they had not targeted specific groups of voters.

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Tea Party challenges voter registrations in Buncombe