Iowa and New Hampshire's coveted status as the earliest presidential voters may be in jeopardy

While Iowa and New Hampshire have long been the first states to kick off the presidential nominating contests, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus points out that they don't necessarily have an "official claim to that status after 2016," The New York Times reports. The Republican Party has long protected the states' statuses, but Priebus is now saying the party ought to give the matter a second look.

"It's just the concept of whether or not the same old order and the same old system is the best system for how we choose nominees of our party," Priebus told National Journal in a recent interview, adding that he didn't think "there should ever be any sacred cows as to the primary process or the order." Critics of the existing nominating process have long said that it allows New Hampshire and Iowa to wield too much influence over candidates and places too much emphasis on just a few states.

Although Priebus has made a lot of changes to the GOP's primary process in this presidential election, he told National Journal that this was one change he neglected to make ahead of the 2016 primary season — and he wants to fix that in the future.

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"One of the things I would have been in­ter­ested in do­ing is sort of like a ro­tat­ing primary pro­cess, where you would di­vide the coun­try in­to five quad­rants and have a primary about once every two weeks. And then you could have about a 10-week primary process," Priebus said. "I've always been intrigued by that idea."