Grassroots activist leaders in the Colorado Republican Party have new hope in overcoming legal and financial barriers in their 5-year quest to withdraw from open primaries in Colorado, with an apparent offer of discounted legal representation in challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 108, a state law instituted by voters in 2016 that regulates how parties can choose their nominees for state elected office.
Citing “interference with the political rights of association” of the Colorado Republican Party, an American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado (ACLU) attorney says Colorado Republican activists might have a viable legal case in challenging a state law requiring a supermajority of 75% of the party’s governing body to opt out of open primaries.
With a crucial vote coming before the Colorado Republican Party’s state central committee next month on whether to continue allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in Republican primary elections, recent voting records of that governing body indicate that grassroots Republicans hold power over establishment members, and could indicate that the state GOP will opt out of open primary elections.
As grassroots Republicans continue their statewide road tour to lobby 517 county GOP officers and other central committee members to vote to end open primaries for their party, leaders of that effort are celebrating their successes and the most recent big-name recruit to their cause, Tom Tancredo.
Just four years after Colorado’s first open primary, a faction of Republican leaders are attempting to opt-out of the laws approved by voters in 2016 which allowed unaffiliated voters to cast votes in partisan primaries. If successful, the largest group of Colorado voters, those without affiliation to a political party who represent nearly 40% of the state’s 4 million voters, will lose their voice in determining Republican nominees for U.S. president and state office races.
