Iowa Democrats compromise with DNC, plan to release 2024 caucus results on Super Tuesday

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.

Iowa Democrats' decision to cede power and accept a place later in the calendar puts to rest a protracted battle that has been ongoing since the collapse of the party's 2020 Iowa caucuses.

And although Iowa Republicans had worried the Democrats' plan could trigger renewed conflict with New Hampshire and threaten their own place at the front of the presidential nominating calendar, those fears were quieted Friday.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan told the Des Moines Register he views Iowa's plan as "a positive development."

"I’ll be reviewing this, and we’ll see how the DNC reacts to it, and then at the appropriate time I’ll set the date for the New Hampshire primary," Scanlan said. "But I think this certainly goes a long way to protecting the traditional positions of the early nominating events of the Iowa caucuses followed by the New Hampshire primary."

Approval from both the DNC and New Hampshire would clear the way for Republicans and Democrats to move forward with their 2024 Iowa caucus plans uninhibited.

But in a news conference, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart suggested the party's acquiescence to national party leaders for the 2024 cycle is part of a plan to help set it up to re-enter the early voting window in 2028 when there will likely be an open Democratic primary and "when it really matters to us."

The Rules and Bylaws Committee has said it plans to reconsider again in 2028 which states will make up the early voting window. And Hart said she has received "a commitment that no state has a guaranteed spot."

"We intend to be first in 2028," said Scott Brennan, Iowa's representative to the Rules and Bylaws Committee. "So we're here to support the president in 2024, and by releasing the results on March 5, that's what we're doing. But all bets are off for 2028."

Brennan said the nearly two-year-long process has been "messy," and he hopes the committee "will have a more streamlined and thoughtful process" going forward.

"As we all know, the day after Election Day on 2024, people will be teeing up for 2028," he said.

2024 Iowa caucus calendar See when and where GOP presidential candidates are campaigning

How Iowa Democrats would caucus under the new plan

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 Register.

"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," Hart wrote in the letter.

The committee met Friday to discuss the proposal, and the group voted to move Iowa's plan into conditional compliance with its rules.

"These have been lengthy and vigorous negotiations," said committee co-chair Minyon Moore. "And I'd like to commend Scott and the Iowa Democratic Party for transforming their caucuses to include an inclusive and accessible mail-in process."

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. 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 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 said the party is still working out some of the details, including which names will appear on the preference card. Currently, Iowa Democrats don't use a balloting system for their caucuses, so they do not have a process for candidates to petition to appear on the ballot.

New Hampshire previously threatened 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."

Scanlan, a Republican who has broad authority to set the date of New Hampshire's primary elections, previously said that if Iowa Democrats moved forward with a mail-in caucus, he would consider it a primary and move his state'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."

On Friday, however, Scanlan tempered those sentiments and indicated Iowa's plan might be acceptable.

Even as New Hampshire appeared to back down from its threats, Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann accused Iowa Democrats in a Friday afternoon statement of being "complicit" in efforts to undermine the Republican caucuses.

"Constant and repeated attempts to thwart Iowa's cherished first-in-the-nation caucus is nothing new," he said. "While there have been different tactics deployed this year — including the complicity and incompetence of the Iowa Democratic Party — the Republican Party of Iowa and the Republican National Committee will continue to steadfastly defend our half-century-old carveout system, to ensure the triumph of grassroots democracy that ultimately strengthens our presidential nominating process."

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."

Republican National Committee says it's handcuffed

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

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.”

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, suggesting the RNC was applying pressure on New Hampshire behind the scenes.

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.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa Democrats want to announce 2024 caucus results on Super Tuesday