State Speaker of the House Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Gunbarrel, who will attend this weekend’s Democratic state convention as a Hillary Clinton delegate, said she appreciates the energy and ideas Sen. Bernie Sanders has brought to the Democratic presidential primary race, but she added that, in light of the tensions around the state’s caucus and delegate-appointing system, she hopes Sanders supporters would study the rules of Colorado’s Democratic Party electoral process.

“I wish some of (Sanders’s) followers were a little more in tune with the process you have to go through,” Hullinghorst said.

Hullinghorst offered the remarks at a press conference Thursday as a prelude to scheduled party nominating contests stacked up over the next two days in Loveland. She was considering complaints made by Sanders supports that his allotment of delegates should reflect the more than 60 percent support he won during state caucus voting on March 1.

“If (Sanders supporters) didn’t wait until the vote was counted to become delegates to the next level, they don’t have a right to say, ‘Just because we got this proportion in the caucuses, that’s the proportion we should have of delegates at the state convention.’ You have to participate in the process all the way through,” Hullinghorst said. “I don’t consider it unfair. You have to be a part of the process here. The process here is caucus, county convention, congressional district convention and state convention. If you don’t have the delegates to reflect your proportion, it’s not anybody’s fault but yours.”

Hullinghorst said she hoped Saturday’s convention would go smoothly. She predicted the final delegate count would be fairly evenly split between the two presidential candidates.

“I hope we don’t have the distractions like we did in the congressional districts,” she said. “It wastes everybody’s time and I believe it causes Bernie Sanders to lose delegates.”

The Colorado Republican state convention last weekend generated howls across the country from supporters of national GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. Ted Cruz swept all 34 of the state’s delegates. Many disappointed Republican voters called the process crooked or rigged, including Trump and his campaign team. Defenders of the admittedly layered caucus and delegate system said the results properly reflected the will of state party activists and dedicated members of the conservative political movement in the state.

-Ramsey@coloradostatesman.com