Even though North Carolina’s legislature greatly improved ballot access in late 2017, there are still some very bad ballot access laws in that state, especially for independent candidates. The petition deadline for independent candidates is in February, which is clearly unconstitutional. In 1980 the state had lost a lawsuit challenging the April petition deadline for independent candidates, and had then improved the deadline, but in early 2017 moved the deadline back to February.

Another problem is that the statewide independent petition requires far more signatures than the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party. In 2004 a federal court in North Carolina ruled that the state could not require more signatures for a statewide independent candidate than for a new party. The state corrected the problem, but then seemingly forgot about that and reinstated the problem in 2017.

A lawsuit challenging various aspects of the independent petition procedure was filed in 2017, but nothing has happened in the case since June 2018, when the State filed a motion to dismiss the case. On March 28, 2019, the plaintiffs filed a motion with the court, asking for a statement about the status of the case. The case is Leifert v North Carolina State Board of Elections, m.d., 1:17cv-147.