UITableViewCell flashing on resize or delete - ios

Question

I am building a card type layout with a UITableView, the "cards" need to be able to resize and be swiped to remove them. I implemented the delegate calls for both actions and the resizing is done as follows:
The "preferred height" is set right before the call to actually resize.
//supply card heights to cell
override func tableView(tableView: UITableView, heightForRowAtIndexPath indexPath: NSIndexPath) -> CGFloat {
//if no cards are in memory put them in memory.
if (cards == nil){
populateCardData()
}
let card = cards![indexPath.row]
return card.preferedHeight
}
And the call to resize:
func resizeCardWithIndexPath(inIndexPath: NSIndexPath) {
//simply reloads the data at the given index path
shouldAnimate = [inIndexPath:false]//DONT PAY ATTENTION TO THIS(for something else)
tableView.beginUpdates()//THIS IS THE UPDATE PART
tableView.endUpdates()
shouldAnimate = [inIndexPath:true]
}
And The removing of cards:
func removeCardWithIndexPath(inIndexPath:NSIndexPath){
//if no cards are in memory put them in memory.
if (cards == nil){
populateCardData()
}
//remove card from the array
cards!.removeAtIndex(inIndexPath.row)
//delete row from tableview
tableView.deleteRowsAtIndexPaths([inIndexPath], withRowAnimation: UITableViewRowAnimation.Automatic)
}
Now...
All of this works. The cell gets resized appropriately and cells are removed correctly. But when resizing or deleting is done, sometimes irritatingly enough, some of the other cells flash while moving in the Table View.
Am I just doing something stupid or is there a better way?
I did a lot of research and tried a few solutions to no avail.
I did find one way to fix the problem is to make the cell background a solid color and not transparent, this fixed the flashing, but is not a solution because the cards need a transparent border so the background can be seen.
If anyone has any insight help will be a life saver!