I especially like number 1.

If I may, I think it'd be nice if the states took turns being first. Iowa and NH gotta be tired of all the hoopla by now.

Though your ideas sound interesting, I'm not a fan of the regional primaries; They'd require too much television and if it were up to me, I'd peel some off of Super Tuesday to further spread out the elections. Of course, I'm a big fan of this long season, so masybe that's coloring my opinion.

Also, I kind of like the district proportionment because allows everyone to be represented and it cuts down on the idea of a lopsided urban vote deciding the state. I haven't researched its beginnings, but if your thing about insuring AA representation is accurate, then it's kind of interesting how it went the other way in NC; Hillary got the mountain district.

The point of the primaries is to choose the candidate with the best chance of winning the general election. So why do deep-red states get any delegates at all in the Democratic primary? There is almost no chance that they will deliver electoral votes to any Democrat. So, why not assign delegates in proportion to the number of people who actually voted for a Democrat in the last general election? This seems a little fairer than an alternative which might well be more effective: no Dem delegates for any state which the Republicans carried by more than (say) 10% last time.

An interesting post, and a worthwhile conversation.

5) This one's tough. Having given them a role, it's not so easy to take it away. At the very least, a party that's committed to enfranchising the District of Columbia can't very well exclude DC from a role in its own convention. But it's not entirely clear to me why the principle of enfranchisement ought to be limited to DC. And there's an important addition to your list - I presume you'd also exclude the separate delegates for Democrats Abroad.

4) The main reason for granting members of Congress automatic slots is that we want them at the convention - that ties them more closely to the party, and makes invests them in the process. When they had to run for competitive slots, many demured - they faced either the embarrassment of a loss, or the prospect of winning by trouncing their own constituents. On the other hand, the superdelegate system tends to favor frontrunners and congressional candidates, and in the long-run, that may prove unhealthy for the party. I'd agree with elminating the DNC slots. I think the unpledged add-ons are a terrible idea, at least in their present form. I'm more ambivalent about the other DPLs, including the ex-presidents, but there aren't enough to make that argument important.

3) Amen.

2) I think you're conflating two separate issues. The first is whether delegates ought to be awarded based on results statewide, at the district level, or via some weighted combination. The second is whether the present system tends to artificially level out real differences in the voting. Personally, I like awarding 2/3 of the delegates at the district level. The origins of the system don't bother me; the question isn't where it came from, but rather, what purpose it presently serves. And we've seen that it tends to force the candidates out of the districts where they already enjoy the greatest levels of support, and into those where they don't. That's incredibly healthy for the party and the country. Contrast that with most statewide campaigns, in which each side focuses on turning out its base and driving up its margins where it's strongest. That way, polarization lies. Which is not to say that you don't have a point. But there are any number of other possible solutions to the objections you raise, including (but not limited to) (a) restoring UADs to their original status as PADs, thus awarding a bonus to the statewide winner (b) tilting the district/statewide balance to, say, 50/50 or (c) getting rid of most of the superdelegates, so that the smaller differences in pledged delegate totals produced by the present system constitute larger percentages of the needed number. But your ultimate objection here is off-base. The reason this fight went nine rounds isn't because 56% was as good as 44% - it's because the party was almost evenly divided, and the results of the state level contests reflected that. I don't think artificially stacking the deck so that the race is over after a handful of contests and we can paper over real divisions will prove a good solution to that problem. But we'll test this proposition in the fall. John McCain, after all, won the nomination through just such a system. If he turns out not to have been properly vetted, or is unable to mobilize his base, I think that will speak eloquently to the problems of rigging the nominating system.

1) I loathe the idea of regional primaries. Sure, it would promote a focus on "regional issues" - that's precisely my objection. For better or worse, we don't have a regional system of government. Federal legislation and policy aren't targeted at the regional level. We need a leader who can speak to the problems of the nation as a whole, and to the issues of the basic political units of the union, the states. The regional primary system encourages them, instead, to pander, offering bromides in place of specifics. But more importantly, a rotating regional system is a lottery. If the Southwest and the Rust Belt had gone first this year, Clinton would be the nominee. If it had been the Northeast and Upper Midwest, it would be Obama in March. It creates a shorter process, but also one more determined than ever by the calendar. And since all 50 states vote on the same day in November, it's a terrible way to select a nominee who will have to run nationwide, not regionally.

Let me add, if I may, two more reforms I'd like to see discussed:

A) Quotas: Do we really need to mandate that the delegations be evenly divided between men and women, and that certain racial and ethnic groups be represented (but not others)? Most people haven't focused on the incredibly complex and restrictive rules governing the selection of delegates, because the color of their skin doesn't impact their choice of a nominee. But that's the whole point. Although it creates a pleasing crowd-shot for the cameras, and shows a striking contrast to the quadrennnial GOP gathering - which looks like an NRA convention - the quota system is a relic. It's not that we've erased gender, racial, or ethnic discrimination; if we eliminated the quotas, there's no doubt in my mind that we'd see a striking and regrettable fall-off in the apparent diversity of the convention. It's that we've made some real progress since 1982. The main objective of the Hunt Commission was to fix what it saw as a major problem - the convention floor looked nothing at all like the rank-and-file of the Democratic Party. It was full of the aging hacks and party bosses of an earlier era, even as the party had become a coalition of rights-focused interest groups. Well, the party's changed again. It's still an unwieldy coalition, but that has more to do with geography, education, and occupation. The grassroots plays an increasingly important role, and the era of machine politics is now largely behind us. For all the paeans, the wonderful diversity of our convention is largely skin-deep - they tend to be significantly older, higher-income, better-educated, and more urban than the party as a whole. The party has spent much of the past two decades moving past interest-group politics. It'd be nice to see the nominating process do the same.

B) Too Many Systems: The states have a huge amount of latitude in determining the rules of their initial determining steps - what the rest of us call primaries or caucuses. This is cute, even quaint, until the contests start to matter. And then it rapidly becomes apparent that even many of the experts don't understand the ins-and-outs of their own states' systems, much less those of the other 49. That's a shame; the contest should be about policy and character, not about mastery or manipulation of arcane rules. The DNC should re-write the rules, and offer states a binary choice. They can opt for primaries, to be run under a fairly rigid set of rules, allowing only for legislatively-mandated differences. Or they can opt for caucuses, under a similarly restrictive set of rules. Out with the firehouse caucuses, the primacaucuses, the primaries with and without conventions, and all the rest. In with two choices, that can be explained once and understood by all.

C) Sanctions: We need sanctions that can stick. So long as they're reversible, the party and the nominees will face incredible pressure to back down. Florida and Michigan decided to call the DNC's bluff. So far, they've lost that gamble - but the DNC and the candidates have also lost support. We all like a system with safeguards and appeals. But fairness is sometimes less important than finality. If, when the RBC ruled against Florida and Michigan, they had understood that the decision was absolute and final, they would've buckled under and submitted new, compliant plans. Instead, they assumed that presenting the DNC with a fait accomplit would induce it to back down - or that they'd be seated at the convetion even over the objections of the RBC, because the nominee wouldn't want to anger them. This whole fiasco has been too costly to allow it to happen again.

Count me in as one not liking the regional primary idea. I don't think one region of the country should virtually decide the nominee. Consider the case where Candidate A has strong ties with the first region to vote and secures a huge lead after the first round. Candidate A now has a substantial lead, builds momentum and rides out a win. I prefer a series of "Super Tuesdays" (or Saturdays, actually) in which a cross-section of the country votes. This way, even if someone builds an early lead with substantial momentum, it would reflect more of a national consensus. I know the scenario above is not guaranteed to play out, but why take the chance?

I like the idea of proportional representation by district. Specifically, I like the idea of awarding delegates to each district based on its turnout for the democratic candidate in the last election. It is all too easy for a democrat in a red-state (like TX, for instance) to conclude "well, my guy will not win this state anyway, so why bother?" The answer to that question, of course, is that downticket dems might still win and could use the vote. The democratic party, as such, has a vested interest in encouraging these voters to turn out and the present system of apportioning delegates creates such an incentive. That is a good thing. Loyal democratic voters deserver such a reward.

Get rid of those fucking caucuses. They're nothing but voter suppression. Then, have IA, NH and SC go stand in line with everyone else.

1. We Need Regional Primaries.

Again, I disagree. There is no need to force anyone to campaign everywhere.

The general failing, I think during the primary season, is that people don't recognize that the point of the primary process is to find the most electable candidate, not the best one to govern the country. One hopes that the two criteria would significantly overlap, but they needn't.

In fact, it is the GE where you get to pick who would best run the country. The individual party's sole concern is to find the best candidate to win the GE.

Your supposition that we need a 50-state strategy is a party choice -- this year they found a candidate who could make that work. In 4, 8, or 20 years, perhaps there is a candidate who couldn't win all 50 states but can capture the top 20 electoral states. Who knows? A party goes down the 20 state route risks going against a party who has a 50 state strategy in the GE, but there is no one best strategy. It depends on the times and the candidates themselves.

Addressing comments by obamagirl68, Allsburg, and articleman...

Rational state ordering makes obvious sense. But as articleman notes, it's an implementation and enforcement problem, not a conceptual problem. I disagree with articleman in that the DNC does have some enforcement power. It was only MI and FL that flagrantly flouted the rules, and regardless of whether their delegations are seated, they've paid a steep price that I think they'll be unlikely to opt for again. Their primaries have been been among the most meaningless of the season when they could have been among the most critical.

But while the DNC's enforcement mechanisms can be applied to exceptions, the states hold the real power. They are the ones that would have to agree on a rational policy, with the DNC (and RNC) used as executors.

I suggest a joint convention after November which would include representatives of the DNC, RNC, and all 50 state legislatures, to hammer out a lottery system and enforcement mechanism. Since it's luck of the draw, ratification of the agreement shouldn't be a problem with two exceptions: IA and NH. These states proudly hold privileged positions that they would not give up willingly. If they're able to convince delegates of the convention to let them keep their privileged statuses, so be it. If not, the DNC and RNC should be able to strip their delegates more easily than MI and FL.

Money is an issue that doesn't make your list, but plays a critical role.

That Hillary Clinton can run deficit spending on her campaign to the degree she does is shameful.

But I can't help it if stupid vendors continue to "sell" things to the Clinton Campaign when everyone knowns they are deadbeats.

We have seen in this election that money may or may not be a good indication of support:

a) Hillary had old money -- but not enough for the popular vote

b) Obama is only in the race because he raised enough money via the Internet to raised awareness of his candidacy which then raised more money on the Internet.

However:

c) Mitt Romney had plenty of money (relatively speaking for a GOP) and it didnt' help him.

d) Mike Huckabee had no money and was able to get out the vote as well.

Lack of money should have sent Hillary home by now, but like a person who has foreclosure looming, she is going to Vegas to play on her credit card looking for the big score. That is why Obama bailing her out sets a bad precedent: serious debt should be the first sign that someone should drop out.

Thanks for this post articleman - I was hoping someone would tackle this subject.

If I were King of the Democrats, I would:
- abolish all superdelegates
- abolish caucuses
- move the start of primary season back 2-3 months. Does anyone else find it utterly ridiculous that people in New Hampshire are voting for President in the middle of freakin January?! We need a more compact primary season from March - May.
- I like with the idea that four states from different parts of the country lead off the voting (such IA, NH, NV, and SC). But every 4 years 4 new states get to lead. The states would be selected by a distinguished selection committee.
- Keep proportional, district based delegates but also give bigger delegate awards for winning the most total votes in a state.

No superdelegates. They can always run as regular pledged delegates.

Instead of regional primaries, how about a series of primaries, one each month from January to May? The first one would be a collection of small states comprising about 5% of the total delegates. Thereafter, each month's primary would comprise an escalating share of the delegates until the May primary had about 40%.

The advantage of this system is a low barrier to entry. Candidates without a lot of money could compete in the early primaries, and if they do well, more money would start flowing in. By the time the final primaries were held we'd almost certainly be down to a final two candidates and there would still be enough delegates outstanding to make a difference.