Group seeks to improve U.S.primary process

WASHINGTON, May 7 (UPI) -- A lottery to determine which U.S. states have the first primaries is one of the ideas being considered by a group studying the presidential nominating process.

Members of the National Association of Secretaries of State are having informal talks with party and state leaders to come up with ways of improving primaries ahead of the 2012 election, Stateline.org reported Wednesday.

The Web site says election officials are interested in restoring order to a process that changed dramatically this year.

"It's time to stop the front loading of the presidential nominating calendar so that state are not pitted against each other in a quadrennial attempt to land a prized early spot in the sequence of voting," Trey Grayson, Kentucky's secretary of state, tells Stateline.org.

U.S. Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., has proposed dividing the states up and using a randomly drawn lottery to give every state a chance to be part of the first of six voting groups.

Some political consultants predict that the push for reworking the primary process will be driven by whichever party is defeated in the presidental election, Stateline.org said.