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Updated: It remains unclear whether the race for lieutenant governor will be close enough to deserve a recount, but legal challenges related to the race are already taking form.

Linda Coleman, the Democratic candidate, who is locked in a tight race with Republican Dan Forest, announced on Thursday her campaign will file two lawsuits in Wake County.

“The state treats the same voter differently even though their situations are exactly the same,” Coleman said. “You can’t treat these people differently. That’s unconstitutional, and we believe their votes deserve to be counted.”

Hal Weatherman, Forest’s campaign manager, said Coleman is suing to change the rules “after the election is over to manipulate the outcome to her advantage.”

Emotions are running high a week after Election Day, as there is still no clear winner in the race to decide the next lieutenant governor of North Carolina.

Republican Dan Forest, who holds a narrow advantage of 11,103 votes out of the 4.3 million-plus already counted, sent emails asking supporters for cash and suggesting an early lead established in unofficial results could be "stolen from us by the unions."

The claim hinges on the counting of provisional ballots – ones cast by voters whose eligibility is in question, often because they lacked ID when registering to vote and on Election Day – but has been batted away as illegitimate by Forest's Democratic opponent, Linda Coleman.

A couple dozen supporters of Linda Coleman rallied around the lieutenant governor hopeful Wednesday in downtown Raleigh for the launch of an outreach effort called Women for Coleman.

Coleman and former U.S. Rep. Eva Clayton called out the Republican-led legislature, and Coleman claimed that opponent Dan Forest's "silence on the critical issues of our time" makes him an "enabler to the drastic erosion of women's rights in our state."