Colorado GOP leadership launches yet another effort to make it easier to block unaffiliated voters from the party’s primaries
Colorado GOP leadership is once again trying to make it easier for the party to block unaffiliated voters from participating in Republicans’ 2024 primaries, this time by proposing a convoluted set of rule changes that could test the bounds of state law.
The Colorado Republican Party’s central committee is set to meet Sept. 30, when it will consider whether to opt out of the primaries next year and instead choose the GOP’s general election candidates through an in-house process.
Under a ballot measure passed by voters in 2016 letting unaffiliated voters cast ballots in partisan primaries, opting out requires 75% support of the “total membership” of the Democratic or GOP central committee, which is made up of about 400 elected officials and local party leaders. But many of the central committee’s members don’t show up to the committee’s meetings — in part because they happen on Saturdays, take an entire day and may be an hourslong drive away — making the two-thirds threshold difficult to meet.