What state would you choose to be
the first?

I would choose Nevada not only because I live there, but because it is probably has a more different Democratic population from Iowa and NH than Colorado. I also think Nevada is more representative of the "West" than Colorado, whose eastern half is more similar to Iowa.

It is interesting to think about. I
wonder though if Colorado's eastern
half has a strong religious contingency
that might be worth getting in the mix
for understanding a canidate's appeal
to people who use religion as a voting
criteria. Even though Nevada's population
keeps growing (more than any state's I think), I do not know if it has a substantial amount of religious voters.

But don't you think that Iowa captures a lot of religious voters, in addition to whatever Southern state they pick?

Nevada has a large Mexican population, which tends to be very Catholic. Vegas is 9% Mormon, but I doubt the majority of them are registered Democrats, excepting the Reid family. I'm not sure about its evangelical population.

Well, ideally one state could fit all of the demographics, but that is not really possible. Iowa does not have a lot of diversity by race to my knowledge though... but I guess when
I was talking about religious voters I was making the mental mistake of stereotyping them as white. What makes sense to me is that two or three states should have primarys on the same day. It aggravated me to no end when Dean was knocked off by the John Kerry cow machine in Iowa and New Hampshire last time... even informed people I knew where voting for Kerry in primaries just because people in previous primaries had voted for Kerry... they knew nothing about him, or his utter lack of charisma. Kerry was good on paper, but it was really obvious that his persona was not the best for a run at president. At least it's easy to say that now, and I am pretty sure that's what I thought before the primarys... although we never can be certain we don't teach ourselves to remember our past opinions differently.

Let's get rid of Iowa altogether. I mean, caucuses? You've got to be kidding me. I'd be impressed if you could come up with a less democratic system that people in a democracy would tolerate than standing in a room with all your neighbors, bosses, spouses, friends, potential mates, and having to publicly announce who you're voting for according to where you stand. I mean, the symbolism must be tough on some people. If there ever was a system that allowed bad people to unfairly influence people around them, it's a caucus.

Why isn't "secret ballot" written into a law somewhere? Why isn't it our default voting system?

Last year I participated in my local
Idaho Caucus. You are definitely right
about some of the awkwardness... I
remember being pissed that my friends
were with John Kerry. It made
me think them to be somewhat of political
simpletons. Something made
me respect a few people that I knew
more when they stood with me in the
John Edwards section. Then, of course,
those folks with Kuchinich were just
down right the impractical ones.

I liked Kuchinich. I like impracticality.

I would offer New Mexico as an option since it does tend to cover most of the demographics except for the reason at the end:

New Mexico has voted for the winning President every time this last half century except twice (the other state is Iowa). The primaries were similar in that respect.

New Mexico is divided half rural and half urban (Albuquerque).

New Mexico is divided a quarter rich (Los Alamos - 14th richest county in the US, Santa Fe, National Laboratory regions, Taos, oil country), quarter poor (rural) and half middle class (Albuquerque).

Of those religious, half are Catholic (Mexicans), half are Protestant (Whities).

However,
New Mexico is more religious than the average US state
and theres more Mexicans than the average US state (actually more Mexicans percentage-wise than any US state). And we all know that Mexicans are too drunk to vote or find their way to the caucus (kind of).