With talk of primaries and caucuses moving into December, how about this idea?
Randomly divide the country into 15 equal groups -- 29 congressional districts each.
Once per month over the course of 4 months (January to April) have a primary election on the first weekend of the month.
The first election would be of 1 of 15 groups.
The second election would be of 2 of 15 groups.
The third election would be of 4 of 15 groups.
The final election would be of 8 of 15 groups.
This system would make the primary national while still giving lower-tier candidates a shot. It would still require that a candidate have at least some organization in order to win (good bye Mike Gravel).
In order to ensure that the party's rank and file had a voice in the nominee, you could require that the first group to vote have also on average voted for the previous party nominee in the general. (Democrats and Republicans might therefore have different regional primaries.)
The key thing is that this system would preserve what is good about our current process while discarding the hyper-focus on Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire.
© Jed Lewison