2016 Chaos

Reeling From 2016 Chaos, G.O.P. Mulls Overhaul of Primaries

By JEREMY W. PETERS

Leaders of the Republican Party have begun internal deliberations over what would be fundamental changes to the way its presidential nominees are chosen, a recognition that the chaotic process that played out this year is seriously flawed and helped exacerbate tensions within the party.

In a significant shift, Republican officials said it now seemed unlikely that the four states to vote first would all retain their cherished place on the electoral calendar, with Nevada as the most probable casualty.

Party leaders are even going so far as to consider diluting the traditional status of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina as gatekeepers to the presidency. Under one proposal, those states would be paired with others that voted on the same day as a way to give more voters a meaningful role much sooner.

But in a move that would sharply limit who could participate in presidential primaries, many party activists are also pushing to close Republican contests to independent voters, arguing that open primaries in some states allowed Donald J. Trump, whose conservative convictions they deeply mistrust, to become the presumptive nominee.

Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are sure to mount fierce resistance when the changes are debated in July at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where party officials are planning to consider a variety of procedural and rule revisions. Normally overlooked and largely irrelevant in recent presidential elections, party rules gained considerable scrutiny this year as, until recently, Republicans faced the prospect of their first contested convention in 40 years.

Anxieties about the system’s fairness, stoked by Mr. Trump when he believed he could lose the nomination, mirror the bitter debate unfolding in the Democratic Party. Democrats will face a similar reckoning before their convention in Philadelphia over how to address the perceived inequities in their nominating process, which Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has denounced as unfair and corrupt.

Given the dissatisfaction with the rules in both parties, officials say, some combination of changes for 2020 is almost certain.

But the parties must balance a conflicting set of priorities. The first is preserving the enthusiasm and interest that are driving far more voters than usual to participate in the primaries this year. The second is to be sure that the parties’ ability to vet and ultimately pick their nominees is not rendered obsolete by a flood of newcomers with little partisan loyalty.

The central question that Republicans and Democrats are now struggling to answer after bruising and protracted primary campaigns is one that cuts to the identity of the modern American political party: Who should be allowed to participate in the presidential nominating process?

“This is a historic moment,” said Elaine C. Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on the presidential nomination system, who noted that the parties could choose two very different paths.

“One possibility is that the system moves even in a more public direction than it has,” Ms. Kamarck said. She suggested that the parties could open their primaries to even more voters in a way that reduces the influence of activists and leaders.

“The other end of the continuum is the possibility that parties begin to take back some of their prerogative to nominate their candidates,” she said.

“The question at this inflection point,” she said, “is which way does it go?”

The superdelegate system in the Democratic Party has become the subject of fervent criticism from Mr. Sanders and his supporters because of the outsize role it gives to members of the party elite in choosing the nominee. That would be one obvious target for reform, Democrats said.

But the changes being considered by Republicans have been more thoroughly discussed. And they include several proposals for reordering the political calendar, which has traditionally begun with Iowa as the first state to vote, followed by New Hampshire, South Carolina and, since 2008, Nevada.

In one possibility that members of the Republican National Committee have floated, the early voting states, also known as “carve-out states,” would retain their special status. But to bring more states into the process earlier, each would be paired with a nearby state that would vote on the same day. So Iowa would still hold the first contest in 2020, but on the same day as Minnesota. New Hampshire would vote next, but on the same day as Massachusetts. And the same-day pairings would change: In 2024, Iowa would be twinned with South Dakota, and New Hampshire with Maine.

“I think there will be a serious discussion about the carve-out states and how that process works,” said Henry Barbour, the national committeeman from Mississippi and a member of the convention Rules Committee.

Expanding the number of states that vote along with Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina would be difficult, Mr. Barbour said, given how aggressively the early states fight every four years to remain first.

But he did acknowledge a consensus that Nevada — which has been plagued by Republican infighting, counting issues and ballot-access problems — was in jeopardy. “I think there’s a good bit of interest to move to another state in the West,” he said.

Colorado or New Mexico would be two options to replace Nevada on the calendar, given their diverse electorates and history of voting Republican and Democratic in statewide elections.

Other changes under consideration include ones that would abolish the early state system as it now exists and replace it with a rotating set of states that would vote together based on a host of shared factors like population size and geography.

Proposals to shrink the influence of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina seem to surface every four years in both parties. But tradition is a powerful force to overcome: Even after the 2012 Republican Iowa caucuses ended without a clear winner because of ballot-counting problems — reigniting complaints that a small and insular state wielded undue influence — efforts to dethrone Iowa failed.

One of the most fraught discussions taking place inside the party is whether to restrict voting in presidential primaries and caucuses to registered Republicans. The impetus is the impending nomination of Mr. Trump, a former Democrat who holds some views that are far out of line with mainstream party orthodoxy.

Mr. Trump won the primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, where voters are not required to be party members. That has spurred some from the party’s conservative wing, including many supporters of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, to question whether independents are exercising too much influence in Republican contests.

“I think that’s probably the biggest discussion of all,” said Ron Kaufman, the Republican national committeeman from Massachusetts and a longtime party leader.

Many argue that a strictly closed process inhibits the party from appealing to a broader swath of the electorate, while others fear that non-Republican voters dilute conservative voices.

“People forget one thing,” Mr. Kaufman said. “The nomination of the candidates for both parties is not an election. It’s a process. And there are those who believe that process should be determined by people who care about their parties.”

One impediment to any sweeping changes to limit open primaries is the Republican Party’s aversion to dictating to states.

“It has been a pillar of Republican Party philosophy that we give maximum freedom and authority to the states,” said Steve Duprey, the national committeeman for New Hampshire. “And to try to dictate one system would seem to be antithetical to that.”

“But I’m sure there will be big fights on that,” he added.

Of course, any changes made now cannot address the unforeseeable. Republicans thought that reforms enacted after the 2012 campaign, such as limiting the number of debates and compressing the nominating calendar, would help make the process less unpredictable. It did not turn out that way.

“It’s always the problem,” Ms. Kamarck said, “that you’re fighting the last battle.”