Rotating Regional Primary System

The Rotating Regional Primary System for the U.S. Presidential primaries is a system where the country is divided into four regions. This plan is being promoted by the National Association of Secretaries of State.[1]

Under the NASS plan, party primaries/caucuses to select national convention delegates would be grouped by region beginning in 2012.

A lottery would be held to determine which region would begin the sequence the first year of the plan. The next presidential election year, the region that held the first position would move to the end of the sequence, and the other regions would move forward.

Iowa and New Hampshire would retain their leading positions in the presidential selection process based upon their tradition of encouraging retail politics.

Primaries/caucuses in each state of a given region would be scheduled on or soon after the first Tuesday in March, April, May or June of presidential election years. States in the same region wouldn't necessarily be required to hold their primaries/caucuses on the same day.

• Regional Groupings Under the NASS Plan

East: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.

South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

West: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming and Guam.

Criticisms

The size of the initial regional primary may be large enough to prevent less-funded candidates from being able to compete. Also, several of the regions (most notably the South and East regions) show significant political bias one way or the other.

Options

• Lottery system

Larry Sabato, director of the UVa Center for Governmental Studies, has proposed a lottery system. This would use the same regions as above, but would wait until about 6 months before the first primary before selecting the order of the primaries. This would prevent candidates from "camping out" in early primary states. [2]

See also

• Delaware Plan
• Graduated Random Presidential Primary System
• United States presidential primary
• United States presidential election
• United States presidential nominating convention
• American presidential debate

External References

• FairVote.org [3]
• National Association of Secretaries of State [4]
• UVa Center for Governmental Studies [5]
• Kentucky Secretary of State [6]
• Fosters.com [7]