Democratic National Committee moves Georgia to first five primaries in 2024

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - The Democratic National Committee has approved a plan to change the order of the presidential primaries in 2024.

Georgia would move into the first five primaries; Georgia and Michigan would follow South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire.

The Democratic National Committee’s rule-making arm made the move to strip Iowa from the position it has held for more than four decades after technical meltdowns sparked chaos and marred results of the state’s 2020 caucus. The change also comes after a long push by some of the party’s top leaders to start choosing a president in states that are less white, especially given the importance of Black voters as Democrats’ most loyal electoral base.

Four of the five states now poised to start the party’s primary are presidential battlegrounds, meaning the eventual Democratic winner would be able to lay groundwork in important general election locales. That’s especially true for Michigan and Georgia, which both voted for Donald Trump in 2016 before flipping to Biden in 2020. The exception is South Carolina, which hasn’t gone Democratic in a presidential race since 1976.

Iowa and New Hampshire have said laws in their states mandate them going before others, and they intend to abide by those, not DNC decrees.

The move will still have to be approved by the full DNC, but it will almost certainly follow the rule-making committee’s lead.

Scott Brennan, a rules committee member from Iowa, said “small, rural states” like his “must have a voice in the presidential nominating process.”

“Democrats cannot forget about entire groups of voters in the heart of the Midwest without doing significant damage to the party in newer generations,” Brennan said.

Georgia’s primary was on “Super Tuesday” in previous election cycles, alongside several other states in a quasi-national prrimary.