Early voting is poised to get underway in several states this month. The Washington Examiner will take a closer look at the swing states, including voting rules you need to know and key differences from prior elections. Part 2 of Battleground Ballots will focus on what has changed in North Carolina, a critical battleground that Democrats believe could seal a general election victory for Vice President Kamala Harris. Read Part 1 on Arizona.

North Carolina residents will start receiving voting materials for the 2024 election this week, with absentee ballots beginning to hit mailboxes on Friday in the critical swing state.

But a few legal challenges regarding the Tar Heel State’s voter registration and ID laws could prove to have a significant impact on whether the state swings red or blue in November.

Former President Donald Trump carried North Carolina in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections. It was notably the only battleground where Trump defeated President Joe Biden, by just over 1 percentage point.

The thin margin by which the state was decided in 2020 makes the legal challenges in the state, including a nearly 6-year-old lawsuit filed by the NAACP protesting North Carolina’s voter ID law, even more consequential to the 2024 election.

Another lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party seeks to purge more than 200,000 voters from voter rolls ahead of the election, citing a failure from the state elections board to require identification to prove citizenship.