With a 2024 presidential election in the rearview mirror, the case is on now for Democrats to determine which states will get to vote first in the 28 primary election, the privilege that not only bestows huge influence in national politics, but brings in millions of dollars from both the campaigns and the press.

Arguments from 12 of them were presented to the Democratic National Committee this past week.

They range from those based on racial diversity to electoral history.

Which states will emerge victorious.

Hello, and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Friday, May 29, 26.

Joining me to dig into all of it is USA Today White House correspondent Francesca Chambers.

Welcome back to the show, Francesca.

Thanks, Dana.

First, being one of the first four

states to vote in a primary gives those states and their voters an enormous amount of influence.

Besides helping to nominate a candidate who can win in 28, what kinds of things is the DNC considering

here?

Well, I mean, it might actually end up being five states.

They have said it will be at least four, one from each of the regions of the United States,

but they could end up picking five, which we'll talk about a little bit later about why they might want to do that.

But what they're looking for, essentially data data is to make sure that they're reflecting

America with their early voting.

And so for them, that looks like racial diversity, but also geographic diversity.

They want their early states to be able to reflect rural voters as well as suburban voters. Eventually what they want is for

their nominee to be someone who going into the general election has already been battle tested in

...