Number of new political parties that will join the Democratic, Libertarian and Republican parties on the North Carolina ballot in November thanks to a law the legislature passed last fall reducing the state's onerous qualification requirements: 2

Date on which one of those newly qualified parties, the ultra-conservative Constitution Party of North Carolina, held its nominating convention: 6/16/2018

Date by which the other newly qualified party, the leftist N.C. Green Party, must submit the names of its nominated candidates to state officials: 7/1/2018

Under North Carolina's old law, signature requirement for a new party to qualify as a percent of the total number of voters who cast ballots in the most recent gubernatorial election: 2

Approximate number of signatures this meant a new party had to collect: 90,000

Percent requirement under the new law: .25

As another alternative for parties to gain access under the new law, number of state ballots nationwide on which a party must appear to qualify for the North Carolina ballot: at least 35

Last time a new party — the Libertarian Party — appeared on North Carolina's ballot for the first time: 1976

Month in which a Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee killed a bill to loosen that state's ballot access restrictions: 2/2018

When the electoral reform group FairVote last assessed state ballot access laws in 2015, number of states it designated as particularly restrictive: 18

Of those 18 states, number in the South: 5*

In Alabama, among the states identified as especially restrictive, year in which a still-pending lawsuit was filed over onerous signature requirements for independent candidates to get on the ballot: 2013

Rank of that suit among the oldest pending constitutional ballot access cases in the nation: 1

As of last year, number of constitutional ballot access cases that were pending in various federal appeals courts nationwide: at least 9

Number of states were such lawsuits were pending in federal district courts: 15

* Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas.

(Click on figure to go to source.)