Iowa Democrats' plan for 2024 presidential caucus results could prompt NH to leap ahead

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Iowa Democrats will begin mailing presidential preference cards for their 2024 caucuses on Jan. 12 and announce the results on Super Tuesday in March — a compromise with national party leaders who removed Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status earlier this year as they reorder the presidential nominating calendar.

If approved, the decision would put to rest many questions about how Iowa Democrats will caucus in 2024.

But it could trigger renewed conflict with New Hampshire, which has opposed Iowa’s transition to a mail-in caucus, and could in turn threaten Iowa Republicans’ place at the front of the presidential nominating calendar.

The Iowa Democratic Party previously announced it would move to an absentee caucus system for casting presidential preferences in 2024 to improve access and participation. But party leaders have been vague about how they would tally and announce the results.

The party released those details Friday morning in a letter issued to the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee and shared with the Des Moines Register. The committee will meet Friday morning to discuss the proposal for the Iowa caucus in 2024.

“We believe this delegate selection plan is a compromise and meets the requirements set forth by this committee, complies with Iowa law, and most importantly sets Iowa Democrats up to win in 2024,” Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart wrote in the letter.

2024 Iowa caucus calendarSee when and where GOP presidential candidates are campaigning

How Iowa Democrats would caucus under the new plan

If the plan is approved, the result will be a dramatically different presidential caucus in 2024. No longer will Iowa Democrats gather in person to physically stand and be counted as they tally presidential support on Caucus Day.

Instead, Democrats would register for the Iowa Caucuses and request a presidential preference card beginning Nov. 1, 2023. Those cards would be mailed out to participants beginning Jan. 12, 2024, and would functionally work like a mail-in primary ballot.

Iowans could request a preference card until Feb. 19 and return it through the mail until March 5. The party would release results on March 5, which is known as “Super Tuesday,” when voters head to the polls in more than a dozen states.

The party will still hold in-person caucuses on Jan. 15 — the same day Iowa Republicans will hold their traditional first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses — to conduct other party business unrelated to presidential preferences.

Hart noted in her letter that she expects the DNC committee to revisit the entire calendar conversation ahead of the 2028 election cycle, possibly giving Iowa a chance to regain a place in the early voting window.

“I am pleased to have repeated reassurance from the co-chairs and this committee that the presidential nominating calendar discussions will once again be opened up for 2028, where I expect Iowa to compete strongly for a significant voice in the selection of the Democratic nominee as we have for years,” she wrote.

New Hampshire threatens to leapfrog Iowa on the nominating calendar

Though the final details of the Democrats’ plan were made public Friday, the conversation has been swirling for months — raising concerns among Iowa Republicans who see a growing threat to their own caucuses.

In her letter to the committee, Hart preemptively pushed back on those fears.

“Republicans continue to attack our inclusive Iowa Caucuses and have conspired to meddle in our party business,” she wrote. “Despite their empty rhetoric, I’ve always said I will do what’s best for Iowa.”

State law says Iowa must hold first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, and New Hampshire state law says it must hold the nation’s first primaries.

New Hampshire leaders have not taken issue with Iowa leading off the calendar — so long as it holds caucuses rather than primaries.

Iowa Democrats plan to announce their contest results in March — well after New Hampshire’s primaries have concluded — in a bid to put the issue to rest.

Hart noted in her letter that other states have, at times, opened their early voting window before New Hampshire’s primaries with little collective heartburn.

In 2020, for example, Californians began voting early for their March 3 primary the same day Iowans went to caucus and about a week before New Hampshire’s contest — a move that then-New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner waved off, saying “it doesn’t affect us.”

But current New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican who has broad authority to set the date of his state’s primary elections, has previously said that if Iowa Democrats move forward with a mail-in caucus, he will consider it a primary and move New Hampshire’s contest ahead of Iowa’s.

That decision would affect both Republicans and Democrats.

“I would say any mail-in or absentee balloting component to a caucus would trigger our law,” Scanlan told the Des Moines Register in an April interview.

More recently, Scanlan told New Hampshire’s WMUR-TV in September that his stance had not changed.

“I am not willing to allow things to take place that are incrementally moving towards a primary, because that gets the foot in the door,” he said. “It’s easier to expand that the next time around. So, we’re going to take a pretty hard line on any effort to make a traditional caucus look more like a presidential primary.”

Is it a caucus or a primary?

Others have agreed that mail-in “presidential preference cards,” which functionally act as ballots and remove the need to appear in person, take Iowa’s contest from a caucus to a primary.

“By any metric, that is a party-run primary,” Rachel Paine Caufield, co-chair of the Drake University political science department, said on a recent Iowa Press interview. “And so quite rightly, New Hampshire is saying, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. We get the first primary. So if that’s what you’re going to do, and you’re going to do it on Jan. 15th, then we’re going to go in front of you.’ And that means not just going in front of the Democrats, but going in front of the Republicans.”

If New Hampshire moves its primary date ahead of Jan. 15, Iowa Republicans will be faced with a choice: They can also change the date of their caucuses to leapfrog in front of New Hampshire, or they can allow New Hampshire to go first in 2024.

Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann told the Register in May that he might not immediately move to jump New Hampshire. He said he’s always looking to protect the long-term integrity of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.

“I can’t tell you what I’d do,” he said at the time. “It looks like I’ll have a decision to make.”

Republican National Committee says it’s handcuffed

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, told the Register in May that the RNC cannot apply sanctions if New Hampshire moves its primaries ahead of Iowa this cycle.

“We have no ability in our rules to do anything if that happens,” she said.

That’s because the Republican carve-out system simply says that Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada are allowed to hold presidential nominating contests before the rest of the states weigh in.

It does not specify in which order the states must go, although there has long been a consensus that Iowa will go first, and New Hampshire will follow.

However, the RNC’s debate committee last month issued a warning to New Hampshire officials, threatening to cancel a planned GOP presidential primary debate in the state if leaders there choose to jump ahead of Iowa on the calendar.

Both Scanlan and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said the RNC’s threat would not affect their decision.

“The first presidential primary will be taking place in New Hampshire, regardless of what the political power brokers in Washington, D.C., think,” Sununu told Fox News. “We will not be threatened, we will follow our law, and we WILL go first. End of story.”

In her letter, Hart rejected the idea that Democrats are to blame for what might happen to Iowa’s GOP caucuses.

“To blame Democrats for chaos in the Republican calendar is unfair, misguided and just plain wrong,” she wrote.

Presidential calendar changes have been in the works for almost 2 years

The presidential nominating calendar has been in flux since national Democrats began discussing the issue more than a year and a half ago.

In February, the DNC voted to boot Iowa Democrats from their first-in-the-nation spot to move away from states that hold caucuses and to promote states that better reflect the party’s diversity.

The DNC’s plan, proposed by Democratic President Joe Biden, would put South Carolina at the front of the line, followed by contests held in New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day, and then Michigan and, finally, Georgia.

But the party has struggled to implement that plan in the months since.

Georgia declined to set its primary date ahead of Super Tuesday, instead opting for a March 12 contest.

The committee voted Sept. 14 to again give New Hampshire more time to make the necessary changes to fall in line with the DNC calendar. Granite State leaders have vowed to hold first-in-the-nation primaries regardless of what the DNC decides.

Iowa Democrats had been vague about whether they, like New Hampshire, would defy the DNC to hold an unsanctioned first-in-the-nation contest and face punishment.

But in an effort to adhere to national Democrats’ desire for more inclusive contests, Iowa Democrats submitted a delegate selection plan to the Rules and Bylaws Committee earlier this year proposing an entirely mail-in absentee process for casting presidential preferences.

Iowa Democrats have said such a move will be more inclusive and grow participation in the democratic process.

The decision to hold in-person caucuses on Jan. 15 alongside Republicans but announce results on Super Tuesday is an effort to appease those who wanted Iowa to keep some claim to “first in the nation,” while adhering to the national party guidelines.

“We will continue to work cooperatively with Rules and Bylaws Committee staff to satisfy any remaining outstanding logistical issues regarding our delegate selection plan,” Hart wrote.

Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.

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Iowa Democrats’ plan for 2024 presidential caucus results could prompt NH to leap ahead

How Iowa Democrats would caucus under the new plan

New Hampshire threatens to leapfrog Iowa on the nominating calendar

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