Nevada changes from caucus to primary for presidential elections

[Crucial_Waukesha]

Watch as Iowa and New Hampshire move at least a month earlier.

Yep, NH is going to end up being the first Tuesday after Jan 1 to preempt everyone else.  

It's because of the fact that I can foresee an eventual NH primary in December of the odd-numbered year before leap year that I have long been speaking out about the idea that we need to adopt a constitutional amendment that establishes a national schedule for when states can hold presidential primaries or caucuses. I have posted this idea several times before in this board, and I might as well post it again now.

Prohibit any state from holding a presidential primary or caucus before April 1 (of leap year).
Allow the smallest states, which have just 3 or 4 electoral college votes, to hold primaries in April. This would mean Alaska, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming could all choose any date in April for their primaries/caucuses. (The amendment would probably also stipulate that the New Hampshire law that says their state must be first in the nation would be void.)

Allow the medium-sized states, which have 5 to 11 electoral college votes, to hold primaries/caucuses in May. The states which could do so would be Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin. These states could choose any date in May for when to hold their primaries or caucuses.

Make all of the largest states wait until June to hold their primaries or caucuses. That would include California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. Again, these states could choose any date in June. The majority of delegates to the national conventions would not be selected until June.

With our current system, the nominations are usually already assured by March, and we have to wait an agonizing amount of time until the conventions are held.

An interesting idea, but a concern I'd have with this approach is that having all of the smaller states go first means that the early primary states will be less representative of the nation's demographics (and especially the diverse Democratic coalition). Only DE and DC have sizable black populations, few if any of those states have sizable Hispanic populations, several of them are very rural and the majority have above-average household incomes. Even if the vast majority of delegates is decided later, a candidate doing well in these small early states could cement them as a front-runner before larger and more diverse states get to weigh in - which is somewhat similar to the problem we have now where IA and NH are so important from a media coverage standpoint.

An idea that I've been considering is having a rotational system: have regions or state clusters go together and either rotate the order every election cycle. The benefits would be that no states are continually of outsized importance, and the system could be fine-tuned to balance different constituencies and potential issues.

Either way, I hope something is done to settle this early-state turf war. Our election cycle is already too long and everyone trying to sidestep NH is just escalating the problem.