The Interregional Primary Plan is a proposed reform to the United States primary calendar supported by Representative Sandy Levin and Senator Bill Nelson, both Democrats. The plan would break the country into six regions. From those regions, one subregion - either a single state or a group of smaller states - would vote on each primary date (e.g., all A states,) with the entire country having held its primaries after the sixth set of primaries votes. Each state would vote first once every twenty-four years, with the first set of primaries determined by lottery and cycled thereafter.
Contents
Historically, the presidential primary season started slowly, ramping up several weeks after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. In the 2008 Presidential primary season, with competition to increase the relevance of each state's selection process, 34 states (plus the District of Columbia), have scheduled their primary or caucus process to be held in January and February, tripling the number of states voting this early than the count in the 2000 races.
Proposed dates
Travel time
The interregional plan would prevent any cost savings from travel or common media markets. Each primary date would be national in geographic scope. This is directly counter to the goal of many plans is to allow for entry of less-funded candidates early on.
Varying primary size
With random assignment to groups within each region, any given primary date could be as small as 29 congressional districts, or as large as 167 (out of 435) districts (if the random draw were to pick CA, TX, NY, FL, IL, and PA together).
With this variation in size comes a variation in importance. If a medium-sized state like Maryland (8 districts) were paired up with California in a 130-district primary, the state would have little importance. If, on the other hand, it were paired up with smaller states in a 45-district primary, Maryland would suddenly be center-stage.
With some rigging, the six primaries can be set to between 70 and 79 districts each, but again whoever gets paired with California is largely ignored.