Back soon with a fresh DJ. In the meantime, I’ll restate my case for reforming America’s system of presidential primaries.

RALEIGH – The presidential-primary system is absurd. It’s way too early. It’s out of balance, and unfair to large swaths of American states.

But that doesn’t mean it ought to be radically changed.

Don’t get me wrong – I favor reforming the system, along lines to be discussed below. It’s just that traditions, even fairly new ones, deserve some thoughtful deference. In particular, I think it is important to begin presidential-nomination votes in less-populated states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

“Like” is not the same as “such as,” of course. While I think that Iowa and New Hampshire have proven to be able hosts for early contests, offering independent assessments of the candidates, there is no good reason to give them a permanent status as electoral gatekeepers. Nor is it sufficient, as has now been accomplished, to bring in Nevada from the Southwest and South Carolina from the South to balance things out. They still come later, giving Iowa and New Hampshire excessive deference. I also think that the large states of Michigan and Florida should never have moved up to the ranks of the early-voting states. North Carolina shouldn’t do it, either.

Smaller states allow a larger number of candidates to be viable. They don’t require as much campaign cash to reach voters via expensive radio and television markets. Mail, free media, online tools, endorsements, and personal outreach remain viable tactics in them. Also, voters in smaller states are more likely to appreciate their national spotlight and take their political power seriously, while those in larger states are apt to see national media coverage and campaign swings as more routine and less exciting.

To get back to the problem, however, the Iowa and New Hampshire stranglehold on the process needs to be broken. Don’t count on prominent national politicians to make reform a high priority, as too many of them consider themselves to be future presidential aspirants and thus don’t want to alienate local politicians and voters in the two states, just in case a reform effort falls short. Perhaps the outgoing president could make primary-process reform an early cause, to be formulated and promoted by a diverse panel of officeholders, civic and business leaders, and political scientists.

My preference would be a process that looks something like this. Take the 20 states with populations between 4.5 million and 1 million (there is such a thing as too sparsely populated a state to play effectively in this game – I’m looking at you, Wyoming and Vermont). Two years before each election cycle, randomly place them on one of five election days to stretch between early February and early April. Each date, in other words, will feature four primaries or caucuses. Such an arrangement would mean you keep the same states voting early every four years, which is good for building strong party networks and experienced primary/caucus voters, without giving any state a permanent primacy in the schedule.

Some have argued either that such a series of early votes ought to be concentrated in a particular region, to make it easier for candidates to campaign and create a sort of regional “voice,” or be carefully balanced so that there are always states voting in multiple regions. I used to like the regional-primary idea, but now I think it would be best to distribute the states randomly each time. That reduces potential conflict, it seems to me, and introduces a healthy dose of unpredictability.

Would we get better presidential nominees if we gave the likes of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Louisiana, Oregon, Kentucky, and New Mexico the opportunity to go first in the balloting? I don’t know. I do know that the current process is rightfully resented, but that moving to early primaries by large states or regional blocs isn’t the right answer. Let’s stay small, but mix things up a bit.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.