State and national Democrats sued North Carolina election officials Tuesday over the state's absentee ballot rules, taking issue with a new process to address mail-in ballot errors.

That process doesn't do enough, the groups said, to ensure everyone's vote gets counted in a pandemic election that's expected to see a big increase in voting by mail. Small mistakes, like a missing signature on an absentee ballot envelope, need easier and faster fixes, the lawsuit argues.

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“This hurdle could leave North Carolinians who cast an absentee ballot but missed one line without a voice in this critical election," North Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Goodwin said in a news release announcing the lawsuit.

The State Board of Elections – a board Gov. Roy Cooper appoints with a Democratic majority – tinkered with the rules in the run up to this election season, and Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell put out a memo describing the new process Aug. 21.

The lawsuit, filed by the state party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, calls the process "incomplete and constitutionally deficient" because it fails to treat every voter the same.

The suit notes that people who fail to sign their own ballot can fix that by emailing, faxing or visiting an elections office in person. But if they leave off the witness signature required by law, they have to fill out a new ballot, adding wait times as the ballot goes back and forth in the mail.

"This is just one example of several arbitrary distinctions in the state board's newly adopted cure procedures memorandum which violate numerous provisions of the North Carolina Constitution," the lawsuit states.

The suit was filed in Wake County Superior Court, which has heard a number of election-related suits in recent months. In fact, there are more than a dozen lawsuit over various North Carolina election rules pending right now in state or federal court.

Most of those suits shouldn't affect the election, but some still may. One, targeting the state's felon disenfranchisement rules, produced a court order Friday that, if it stands, would allow those who've completed their active sentences but still owe fines and fees to vote in this year's elections.

Marc Elias, a top attorney for Democrats nationally, is involved in five North Carolina lawsuits at the moment, including this latest one. In a release announcing the suit, the DSCC and DCCC noted that they've put more than $10 million toward voting rights litigation for the 2020 election cycle.

The suit asks the state courts to declare the state's ballot-curing process unconstitutional and to forbid state and local election officials from rejecting absentee ballots over incomplete witness signatures unless voters are notified and given a chance to fix the issue first.

Other lawsuits have attempted to remove North Carolina's witness signature rule altogether for this election, arguing a need for social distancing.

State Board of Elections Chairman Damon Circosta said Tuesday that "this is not an easy time for election administrators" and that repeated lawsuits "are but one point that's injecting uncertainty."

"But I'm also aware we are in the middle of a global pandemic, and people have lots of concerns," Circosta said.

"We're going to get this right," he said. "It's just going to take us a tremendous amount of work in the next two months."