Sixteen states and Puerto Rico have been invited to move forward with their applications to hold early Democratic Party presidential nominating contests in 2024, a Democratic National Committee official told CNN on Saturday.
New York, Nebraska and the group Democrats Abroad were the only applicants who didn’t make the cut.
The remaining applicants will make presentations later this month to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is tasked with determining the party’s nominating process.
Committee co-chairs James Roosevelt and Minyon Moore invited Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas and Washington to make presentations to the Rules and Bylaws Committee during a June 22-24 meeting.
The committee will select a group of states over the summer, and that decision will then need to be approved by the full DNC.
Earlier this year, Democratic Party officials approved a plan that kicked off the process that could determine which states will get to hold their presidential nominating contests first in 2024.
The new plan scraps the current set of early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and implements a process that would prioritize diverse battleground states that choose to hold primaries, not caucuses. Under the new structure, states will apply to hold early nominating contests and the rules committee will select up to five that will be allowed to go before Super Tuesday, the first Tuesday in March.
