“The NASS plan spreads the primary process over four months and ensures that voters and candidates have time to get to know one another,” Michigan Secretary of State Terry Lynn Land said in a prepared statement.

Under the current system, states are allowed to set their primary dates, but are constantly scheduling their primaries at earlier times.

This gives voters less time to study candidates and increases campaign expenses, said Kelly Chesney, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State. This year, 18 states moved their primaries, Chesney said.

“They’re front-loading the whole calendar,” she said.

Under the NASS plan, primaries would be conducted from March through June.

Bill Rustem, president of Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants Inc., said the plan would bring a needed change to the current system.

He said states are motivated to move their primaries forward so they can have more influence on the campaign.

But that can lead to party sanctions for violating primary rules, ultimately giving the violating state less say in the election.

“Michigan was a poster child for some of the problems with that issue,” Rustem said.

After Michigan moved its primary from Feb. 5 to Jan. 15, most Democratic candidates removed their names from the ballot, and the Democratic Party originally penalized the state by giving each Michigan delegate only half a vote at the Democratic National Convention.

The sanction was overturned during the convention last week, and Michigan delegates received full voting rights.

In order for the NASS plan to be implemented by the 2012 presidential election, the Republican Party would have to agree to the plan during its national convention this week.

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis said the plan has a good chance of eventually being adopted — but not in time for the 2012 election.

“It won’t happen,” Anuzis said. “We already passed a series of proposals that were in front of us the secretary of state proposal did not make it into the final.”