North Carolina HB 589, the omnibus election law bill, will receive a vote in the State Senate on Wednesday, July 24. The session starts at 1 p.m. eastern time. Among the other parts of the bill is a provision moving the presidential primary from May to February. See this commentary about that part of the bill from Frontloading HQ blog. If the bill passes, North Carolina would have a February presidential primary and a May primary for all other office, followed by a run-off primary. Having three primaries in presidential election years would greatly increase the cost of election administration.
Yet another part of the bill, not mentioned earlier, provides that the legislature should study the issue of whether to continue to have run-off primaries.
Switching to a Top 2 primary would eliminate the need for a runoff. The primary could also be moved later since you don’t have to add a couple of months for the primary.
It would also eliminate the petition for independent candidates. The filing fee is much less than the cost of gathering the number of signatures.