Romney: GOP should favor primary states

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) says the GOP’s nominating process for president should reward states that hold primaries instead of caucuses.

“I’m concerned that there’s an effort on the part of some to move toward caucuses or conventions to select nominees, and I think that’s a mistake,” Romney told The Boston Globe.

“I think we should reward those states that award delegates to the convention based upon primaries. Primaries are the place where you see whose message is connecting with the largest number of people.”

Romney won about half of the GOP caucuses during his run for president in 2012 but narrowly lost the first one, in Iowa, to former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.).

The caucus process tends to favor candidates most favored by the Republican base because party activists make up the majority of participants.

In 2012, 17 states and territories held Republican caucuses. They were Alaska, Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho, North Dakota, Kansas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Hawaii, American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the North Mariana Islands.

Each political party determines whether a state will hold a primary or caucus. In a caucus, voters congregate in groups, and then they vote by standing in certain spots of the room.

Bill Clinton recently made the case against caucuses, too. On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” in September, he said there are “way too many” caucuses.

“I still think we have way too many caucuses,” Clinton said. “They’re not democratic. And unlike primaries, they have no legal enforcement. You can break the rules. Nobody’s gonna say anything. I think there are way too many of them.”