Welcome to the United States, where a few hundred thousand Iowans and New Hampshirites choose our presidential candidates.
It's undemocratic when voters in two states always vote first and get to know presidential candidates on a first-name basis while most of the rest of us can only watch the process from a thousand miles away.
Potential candidates in 2012 are already moving into Iowa. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has been there more than once, while Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki, Nevada Sen. John Ensign and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour are also making stops.
Iowa's presidential caucuses, followed by New Hampshire's primary, establish the front-runners. No one outside of Georgia had heard of Jimmy Carter in 1976 until he won Iowa. When George W. Bush won in 2000, the Republican nomination was effectively his, and it was in Iowa that Sen. John Kerry became the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2004. It was in New Hampshire that John McCain became the GOP front-runner in 2008 and where Bill Clinton became the "comeback kid" in 1992.
Iowa and New Hampshire's status in the pecking order mean they not only choose the front-runner, but they also winnow the field of candidates. By the time these two states are finished, there often remain only two or three candidates, one with so much momentum that the nomination is effectively sealed.
In response, states have moved up their own primaries in a mad dash to the front of the line.
We can't all have a private conversation with our presidential candidates, but can't we reform the system so that average Americans in other states can get face time with their future leaders?
The solution is the same one that we all learned in kindergarten: Take turns. Through a lottery system or alphabetical order, let's give a different set of four states the first pick each election cycle, and please, and let's start it in March. That would let voters in every part of the country have an actual conversation with the candidates at least once in their lifetimes.
Allowing the same states so much influence each election cycle isn't fair and isn't democratic. After all, you can't have a government of the people, by the people and for the people when some people's votes count a lot more — and a lot earlier — than others.
Noelle Nikpour, a Republican strategist and fundraiser, regularly appears on Fox News, The Strategy Room and various political talk shows. Respond to this column by writing toletters@SunSentinel.com.
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