Al Gore and George W. Bush both coasted to delegate majorities Tuesday.

The front-loaded primary and caucus schedule -- with 28 states awarding delegates in one party or both in just eight days -- enabled the vice president and the Texas governor to win nominating majorities earlier in the election year than any prior candidate who wasn't already president.

Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma voted Tuesday, their shared primary day reflecting an earlier attempt to shape the schedule to strengthen the hand of the South.

Southern states grouped their primaries in a bid for influence over the Democratic ticket in 1988, which didn't work then but did four years later. This time, California, New York and 14 other states vaulted ahead of the South.

Gore swept those March 7 contests, and brushed Democratic rival Bill Bradley aside as a candidate. Bush won the major Republican contests, forcing challenger John McCain to shelve his campaign.

That made the nominations a political certainty. Tuesday, it became a mathematical one, with delegate majorities in hand nearly five months before the national conventions vote to put Bush and Gore atop the major party tickets.

Before this campaign, the Republican and Democratic national committees began weighing the nomination process, with panels considering whether to try to impose a more measured pace to the primary calendar in 2004 and beyond. Even if they decide to try, history and political reality put the odds against them.

There's been talk of change for more than 20 years, perhaps to a system of regional primaries, which is one of the options now.

But the obstacles that always have blocked changes in the primary process are still there. Both parties would have to sign off on the same plan to make it work. Or Congress would have to step in where it has been wary of treading, and enact a law creating a presidential primary framework, over the certain protests of the states.

The Democrats set rules for their primaries before the 2000 campaign, with only Iowa and New Hampshire permitted to begin choosing delegates until a week ago when other states could vote -- which 16, including the two biggest, did. That rule was enforced with the threat of a 25 percent delegate penalty on any state that tried to start early.

The Republicans also tried to discourage leapfrogging to the front of the primary schedule by offering a 10 percent delegate bonus to states that would wait. But extra delegates are no draw when they can't influence a nomination because it already has been settled elsewhere.

So the Republicans would have to tell their state parties what to do, which goes against their grain.

"That's a big philosophical hurdle in our party," said Republican National Chairman Jim Nicholson. But he said in an interview it should be confronted.

"I think change is badly needed," Nicholson said. "If we don't change it, we're headed inexorably to a national primary day, and I think that would be bad."

Super Tuesday was close to one, and until it settled the Bush-McCain contest, voter turnout in the Republican primaries was up, to records in more than a dozen states. Turnout sagged in the less competitive Democratic primaries.

In the two states that voted on Friday, and almost certainly in Tuesday's foregone primaries, turnout turned minimal.

"The goal has got to be voter participation," said Democratic National Chairman Joe Andrew. "Not just a rigid system that tries to spread things out."

But when there's no contest, there's no draw to voters unless there are state nominations at stake along with the presidential primaries, as was the case in three states on Tuesday. The springtime primaries ahead -- 17 of them -- are combined, too.

Andrew said timing isn't the only issue. He said the Democrats took a major step to open the process by barring winner-take-all presidential primaries and awarding their delegates in proportion to popular votes.

Nicholson said the GOP committee studying the primary system is looking at that question. But ending winner-take-all rules is another matter. In New York, where Bush just won the 2000 primary, Gov. George Pataki has just proposed an overhaul to put all the 2004 GOP candidates on a statewide ballot and award all the delegates to the one who wins. California's biggest GOP delegation went entirely to Bush for winning the primary there.

In Florida, one of the states voting Tuesday, there's already pressure to go sooner in the next campaign so that everything won't be settled elsewhere.

Andrew said that in what the Democratic rules committee has heard so far as it considers the primaries, there is no consensus on either the problem or the solution.

But Nicholson said that unless there are changes, early primaries in the big states will settle nominations, leaving smaller states neither influence nor the attention of the presidential candidates. "It's just going to continue to get worse unless we do something," he said.