On June 21, the North Carolina House Elections Committee passed SB 656, the ballot access bill, by 15-8. However the bill was amended, so assuming it passes the House, it will then need to return to the Senate. It is expected the bill will be brought up for a House floor vote on June 22, or possibly June 23. The bill cuts the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from 2% of the last gubernatorial vote, to exactly 10,000.
The House Elections Committee amended the bill in three ways: (1) it moves the independent candidate petition deadline from April to June (it had always been in June, except that a bill passed earlier this year moved it to April, which is clearly unconstitutional); (2) it says that a party that is not otherwise on the ballot, but which placed its presidential nominee on the ballot in at least 40 states at the last presidential election, is on the ballot for president only, even without a petition, in the upcoming presidential election; (3) it minimizes the odds that any party with its own primary will ever again have a run-off primary (current law says a runoff primary is needed if no one got 40%, but the bill lowers that to 30%).
The second amendment is plainly intended to help the Green Party, because Jill Stein was on the ballot in 44 states in 2016. A party that meets this qualification must provide documentation to the State Board of Elections in the odd year before any presidential election. Such parties may also have their own North Carolina presidential primary. Generally newly-qualifying parties in North Carolina never have a primary of any type; they nominate by convention.