Iowa Democrats’ first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses could look very different in 2020, depending on the changes recommended by a party panel meeting for the first time in Washington, D.C., this week.

The Democratic National Committee’s newly convened Unity Commission will explore a raft of reforms to the party’s presidential nominating process. But high on the agenda could be new rules for caucus contests aimed at increasing participation and standardizing the reporting of results.

Although several commission members stressed that the changes won’t target Iowa specifically or intentionally threaten its first-in-the-nation status, some Iowa Democrats worry Iowa’s four-decade run at the front of the nominating calendar could be challenged.

“There’s going to be a discussion of caucuses, and I think it’s going to be a fairly harsh discussion,” Iowa DNC member Scott Brennan said. “Anytime anybody talks about the caucuses, it represents a threat or, maybe, an opportunity to make them better.”

Commission members reached for comment this week said any changes pursued in the coming months are meant to improve Iowa’s role, rather than undermine it.

“We certainly want to see improvements to the caucus process to be more transparent and friendly to the participants,” said Jeff Weaver, a commission member who served as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ national campaign manager in 2016. “It’s certainly in the interest of the party to have as many people coming out and participating in the caucus process as possible.”

That view was echoed by others on the committee, who noted the dysfunction seen in states such as Nevada, as well as the arcane process Iowa observes in determining caucus-level support for candidates and reporting statewide results.

Those challenges have been amplified in recent elections by larger turnout and closer races, said Elaine Kamarck, a commission member who backed Hillary Clinton for president and who has written a book on the presidential nominating process.

“In the last couple of cycles, the number of people participating has exploded, and it does make people worry about the ability of parties to actually create an outcome from caucuses,” she said.

But, Kamarck added, Iowa is not really the issue.

“It really is about all caucuses,” she said. “In fact, most people think that of the caucus states, Iowa does the best job. It is a bigger discussion than Iowa.”

At this early stage, it’s impossible to predict how discussions will play out within the 21-member commission or what recommendations it’ll arrive at.

There appears to be general agreement, though, that caucuses should feature a more straight-forward voting process and easier-to-understand results.

National rules to that effect would require major changes in Iowa.

Iowa’s Democratic caucuses determine support for candidates by dividing attendees into preference groups — that is, by physically moving supporters of different candidates into different areas of the meeting space — and then holding a “realignment period” in which supporters choose a new candidate if their top choice fails to meet a certain threshold of support.

That exercise can be mystifying to new participants, commission members said, potentially discouraging them from attending or prompting them to quit midway through.

It can also limit access since, unlike a primary, all participants must arrive at the same time and take part in the lengthy process.

Iowa’s method of reporting results could also be affected.

Since the 1970s, caucus results have been expressed in terms of the number of delegates each candidate would send to the state convention, and the party has never released raw vote totals from each precinct site.

Weaver said he’ll be pressing for rules requiring the release of actual vote totals. Doing so, he said will increase transparency and could aid candidates with meaningful levels of support that don’t show up in the delegate allocation.

Other commission members were less specific but emphasized the need for improved “transparency” in the results.

Instead of the current system, the commission could push for so-called “firehouse” caucuses, in which attendees cast a more traditional ballot, making the process far faster and simpler and yielding more comprehensible results.

The Republican Party of Iowa has used such a system for years.

Iowa will have a representative on the Unity Commission: Jan Bauer, a DNC member and long-time party activist from Ames.

In an interview, Bauer was reluctant to predict what the commission might do but said she saw her role as an advocate for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status.

“Of course Iowa’s best interest is my best interest, and so I will do my best to represent the state,” she said.

In a separate interview, Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Derek Eadon said the party was always ready discuss changes, while defending Iowa’s first-in-the-nations status.

For now, he said, Iowans are waiting to see where the debate goes.

“If conversations come up on how we approach changes, we prepared to talk about them,” Eadon said. “But there is no guarantee that any changes will actually come out of this commission.”

Perhaps the biggest concern for Iowa is how caucus changes mandated by the DNC could upset the state’s uneasy alliance with New Hampshire.

For decades, Iowa and New Hampshire have gone one-two on the nominating calendar with the agreement that Iowa’s caucus process remains distinct enough not to challenge New Hampshire’s status as the nation’s first primary.

If Iowa must take steps making its contest operate more like a primary, how would New Hampshire respond?

It depends on the details, said New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, the Democrat who administers the state’s primary and has been influential in decades for setting the nominating calendar.

In an interview Friday, Gardner said he was unaware that the Unity Commission had even been formed to review the nominating process.

But, he said, he would review any DNC-mandated changes to determine whether they make the caucuses “similar” to a primary. If they did, New Hampshire could move to schedule its primary ahead of Iowa, he said.

But what would be “similar”? Gardner said allowing absentee voting might qualify, but voting on paper ballots — as Iowa Republicans do — probably would not.

“Does it make it no longer a caucus if they use paper? I don’t think so,” he said. “But then, other things come into play as well.”

At least one prominent Iowa Democrat thinks the state should stop caring so much about New Hampshire.

“Iowa has to stop worrying about how New Hampshire is going to react to things,” said Pete D’Alessandro, a long-time Iowa political operative who ran Sanders’ presidential campaign in the state. “We need to what we need to do to protect this system and protect where we are in the calendar, and then see what happens and react to that.”