LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Even though Michigan Republican Chairman Saul Anuzis and Democratic activist Debbie Dingell were two of the driving forces behind moving up the state's presidential primary to Jan. 15, neither wants a repeat in 2012.

Anuzis and Dingell on Tuesday proposed a bipartisan presidential primary selection plan that would divide the 50 states into six regions. The nation would hold six separate presidential selection dates, with one or two states from each region chosen to participate on each date. A lottery would determine the order in which the groups voted.

The plan is patterned after a federal bill proposed in September by U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. That measure would create six primary dates, between March and June, featuring states from six separate geographic regions.

Under the Levin-Nelson plan, Michigan would be included in a region made up of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Each state in a group would be paired with states from other groups through a drawing.

For example, Michigan might hold its presidential primary or caucus on the same date as Connecticut, Rhode island, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Oregon, depending on which states get drawn.

Dingell and Anuzis copy that setup. But instead of rotating the groups of states so that each group moves up one position in each election (the second group moves up to first, the first to sixth), they propose that a lottery be held 14 months before every presidential election setting up the order in which the groups will vote.

No group can go first twice in a row, but the groups would not be locked into a strict rotation every four years, giving them the chance to still be near the front of the pack and taking away the incentive to jump ahead and violate the rules, Anuzis and Dingell said.

"We need to end the monopoly of some states that always enjoy earlier contests while protecting every state's right to be relevant in the process," said Dingell, a Democratic National Committee member who has fought to take away Iowa and New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation status.

Levin said the beauty of the plan is that it spaces out primary dates over several months, requiring candidates to establish themselves in several states in different regions of the country. He said it also allows a broad range of viewpoints to weigh in on who wins the nomination.

"The disaster caused by our current system and this year's front-loaded, frantic, disorganized primary calendar shows we need reform now more than ever," he said in a statement.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera said the DNC had no comment on the plan. It's expected the Republican National Committee will present a revised primary plan in conjunction with next year's national convention in St. Paul, Minn.

"The Republican National Committee will make a recommendation on the 2012 primary process for the 2008 Republican National Convention," RNC Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan said Tuesday in a statement.

A call requesting comment was left Tuesday afternoon with the Republican National Committee.

Michigan has been threatened with the loss of all its Democratic national convention delegates and half its Republican ones because it violated party rules by moving its presidential primary ahead on the election calendar. State party leaders expect to get the delegates restored.

But Michigan's move to Jan. 15 pushed the Iowa caucus to Jan. 3 and the New Hampshire primary to Jan. 8, their earliest dates ever. Both states are fiercely protective of their status as the leadoff states in the presidential selection process.

They weren't the only states to move ahead. Wyoming Republicans moved up their caucuses to Jan. 5, and South Carolina Republicans moved up their primary to Jan. 19. Florida jumped ahead on the calendar by setting its Democratic and Republican primary for Jan. 29.

"Our proposal would create a reasonable and fair solution for each state and would end the state leapfrogging that is moving the beginning of the process obscenely early," Anuzis said in a release. "A system like this would finally bring sanity to the process."