No offense to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina…

… but why should these three states have such an unfair, almost monopolistic, influence on who will be the President of the United States?

Every four years a deluge of hopeful candidates will spend in excess of a year bragging about visiting every county in Iowa in the quest to become their Presidential nominee while ignoring the rest of the country except to host $10,000 a plate dinners in Hollywood and Wall Street.  This quadrennial event gives a few citizens an exclusive opportunity to personally ‘Meet & Greet’ with the person who will become the most powerful person in the world while the majority of our country doesn’t even receive an introduction.

By the time South Carolina has announced their results more than 75% of the original candidates have dropped out (or suspended their campaign). How many times do we hear comments from people who live in States where the Primaries are in May, “Why should I vote? The nominee has already been chosen”. The current nominating process is not fair, it is not democratic and repeatedly ignores the opinions of more than 95% of the country’s voters.

So what can be done? Create a system whereby every State, every citizen, has the opportunity to vote first!

The General Election for President is determined by 538 Electoral College votes. This number is calculated by 2 votes from each state and the District of Colombia (102 votes) and the remaining 436 votes allocated per the population of each state and the District of Colombia as based on the number of Congressional seats within the House of Representatives. If our founding fathers determined this ‘Electoral Process’ was the best way to pick our President in the General Election then shouldn’t it be used to chose our Presidential Nominees?

VOTE ALLOCATION

Create 6 voting groups from the 538 Electoral Votes with 4 groups consisting of 90 votes and 2 groups with 89 votes. For example, based on the 2020 census, groups could comprise of:

• Group 1 could comprise 90 votes from Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), Montana (4 votes), Louisiana (8 votes), Virginia (13 votes), Missouri (10 votes), New Mexico (5 votes), Massachusetts (11 votes), Kansas (6 votes), West VIrginia (4 votes) and Wisconsin (10 votes).
• Group 2 could comprise 89 votes from California (54 votes), Georgia (16 votes), Delaware (3 votes), Minnesota (10 votes) and Utah (6 votes).
• Group 3 could comprise 90 votes from Texas (40 votes), Washington (12 votes), Michigan (15 votes), Alabama (9 votes), Connecticut (7 votes) and Oklahoma (7 votes).
• Group 4 could comprise 90 votes from Florida (30 votes), Ohio (17 votes), South Carolina (9 votes), Iowa (6 votes), Kentucky (8 votes), North Dakota (3 votes), Rhode Island (4 votes), Maryland (10 votes) and Vermont (3 votes).
• Group 5 could comprise 90 votes from New York (28 votes), Nevada (6 votes), Oregon (8 votes), South Dakota (3 votes), District of Colombia (3 votes), North Carolina (16 votes), Mississippi (6 votes), Maine (4 votes), Indiana (11 votes) and Nebraska (5 votes).
• Group 6 could comprise 89 votes from Illinois (19 votes), Arkansas (6 votes), Tennessee (11 votes), New Jersey (14 votes), Arizona (11 votes), Idaho (4 votes), Alaska (3 votes), Hawaii (4 votes), Colorado (10 votes), Wyoming (3 votes) and New Hampshire (4 votes). 

# of Electoral College Votes per 2020 Census:

VOTING ORDER

6 Presidential Primaries would be held biweekly with the first group voting on the second Tuesday in March, the second group voting the fourth Tuesday in March, and so on until the last group votes by mid-May. The order of voting by group would be:

• Starting in 2028 the voting order would be groups 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 then 6. 
• In 2032 the voting order would change to groups 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 then 1.
• In 2036 the order would be 3, 4, 5, 6, 1 then 2.
• In 2040 the order would be 4, 5, 6, 1, 2 then 3.
• In 2044 the order 5, 6, 1, 2, 3 then 4.
• Finally in 2048 the order of voting would be groups 6, 1, 2, 3, 4 and then 5.

Over a 24-year period, every State and theoretically every citizen would have the opportunity to be the first to vote for the Presidential Nomination.

Since the process would no longer be dominated by a select small portion of the country this could add some interesting dynamics into the Presidential nominating process; small states verses larger states, conservative states verses liberal states, regional demographics, economic verses social interests and more.

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