Must-read NYT Richard Fausset:

The purest distillation of the nation’s wars over voting rules and legislative gerrymandering is playing out in North Carolina.

A high-profile lawsuit is taking on a voter identification law and other voting changes. There are four other suits challenging North Carolina’s congressional or state legislative districts on racial grounds. Three more allege unconstitutional gerrymandering of local races. And on March 4, a new law changing how judges are elected was struck down by a three-judge state panel.

When voters go to the polls for the North Carolina primaries on Tuesday, any votes for congressional candidates will not count because a federal panel threw out the state’s congressional map in February. A separate congressional primary will be held June 7.

States around the nation are embroiled in legal battles over voting requirements, district lines and the rules governing elections. But North Carolina feels like the center. It is a place where hyperpartisanship, the focus on voting rules after the disputed election of President George W. Bush in 2000 and the Supreme Court’s dismantling of a crucial section of the Voting Rights Act have created an incessant state of combat over the way elections are conducted.