Colorado Republicans will decide in September whether to cancel next year’s primary election rather than allow unaffiliated voters to participate, party officials said this week, although the state GOP chairman says he’s confident the proposal will go down in flames.

State voters approved Proposition 108 last year, allowing unaffiliated voters – a smidgeon over one-third of the electorate – the chance to cast ballots in primaries without having to affiliate with a party. The initiative includes a provision that lets political parties decide against holding a primary and instead nominate candidates directly to the fall ballot at party assemblies, which is what some Republicans are suggesting.

“I am opposed to it,” said Jeff Hays, who won election as party chief in April after running on a platform of embracing what he calls semi-open primaries. (Truly open primaries would allow voters affiliated with one party to vote in another party’s primary, which isn’t the case in Colorado.)

“We’re going to look at this thing as an opportunity, not a crisis,” Hays said. “We feel it’s an opportunity to go win over some hearts and minds. That’s the way we’re approaching it.”

Hays said the fact Democrats aren’t even considering the move makes it all the more likely state Republicans will reject it.

“I think it ends up being a prisoner’s dilemma,” he said, referring to a classic game-theory conundrum. “We would look like the party that hates unaffiliated voters. That’s certainly not the case. We value their opinions, value their participation, and we should make sure we very assertively engage them in the process. The people of Colorado voted through the initiative process that they wanted unaffiliated voters heard in our primary.”

Some Republicans disagree, including an Adams County state central committee member circulating a petition to force party leaders to weigh in on the question, and the former congressional candidate who lost the state party chair race to Hays in April.

“It was simply going to be ignored and then we would, by default, have to accept the unaffiliateds diluting the Republican base electorate selecting our candidates,” said Ben Nicholas, who started a petition invoking the state GOP’s bylaws to demand a meeting on the issue. “Whether we win this battle or not, we should have the right to vote.”

The Colorado Republican Central Committee is scheduled to convene the morning of Saturday, Sept. 23, at Englewood High School, a GOP spokesman said. Hays told Colorado Politics the party’s executive committee is certain to put the primary question on the agenda at its meeting this Friday, Aug. 11.

State parties have until Oct. 1 to notify the secretary of state if they’ll be opting out of next year’s primary, a decision that requires the consent of three-quarters of a party’s state central committee, according to the law.

Democrats held their state central committee meeting last Saturday, Aug. 5, in Pueblo, and the question didn’t even come up, a party spokeswoman said.

“Why would we cancel an election?” Anne Wilscack, the party’s executive director, asked Colorado Politics in between peals of laughter. “No one even raised that as a possibility.”

Bill Hammons, chair of the Unity Party of Colorado – the state’s newest minor political party – recently told Colorado Politics he hopes he has a challenger for the Unity Party’s gubernatorial nomination next year so that every unaffiliated voter in the state will receive the party’s primary ballot in the mail. In addition, the party adopted bylaws at an organizational meeting last month saying its primaries will always be open to unaffiliated voters.

It’s a sentiment Nicholas doesn’t share.

“To clearly state my position, the Republican Party is open to anyone who wishes to join us and exercise their right to vote as a registered Republican in our primaries,” he wrote in a letter linked to the petition asking Republicans to vote on opting out from next year’s primary.

“Our platform is an open document for anyone to read. To allow unaffiliated voters to have an influence on the selection of our candidates is foolish. It would be as foolish as allowing the New England Patriot fans to have a say in who the Broncos starting quarterback should be.”

Nicholas said he’s had a strong response to the petition, with around half of those who opened his email signing it. He added that he was glad Hays had agreed to let the committee have its say.

“There’s a faction there that doesn’t want this to be brought up. That is not right. This is such an important issue. I feel it could mortally wound our party here in this state,” Nicholas said.

“Anybody’s welcome to join us,” he added, explaining why he disagrees with letting unaffiliated voters cast primary ballots.

“There’s no dues, there’s no entry fee. It takes less than five minutes to go to the voter registration rolls and sign up as a Republican, and then you can vote in our primary. Many of these unaffiliated voters would stand in line to get a root canal before they would sign with any political party. To allow them to make a selection who our candidate is makes no sense. We’re trying to expand the party. We’re trying to get people involved and understand this is critical, it has an effect on your life, your income, everything.”

Hays said he understands the arguments against letting unaffiliated voters help pick nominees – and repeats the football analogy Nicholas used.

“The problem with that argument is the caucus and assembly process is not of the party’s choosing, either – that is an unfunded mandate commanded upon us by the state Legislature. So the thought that we are this self-contained private organization is wrong,” Hays said.

“We may wish we were a private organization, but the Legislature commands us to do caucuses and assemblies, and the people through the initiative process have commanded us to do a semi-closed primary.”

George Athanasopoulos, who ran against Hays for state chair and was last year’s Republican nominee in the 7th Congressional District, is also urging the GOP to ditch the primary and instead use the nominating process to grow the party.

“Colorado Republicans can create a process to nominate candidates on our own, and Republican candidates can conserve their resources for the general election,” Athanasopoulos wrote in a letter he’s been distributing to party stalwarts. “After we withdraw from the primary process, our nominating process will be entirely up to Republicans. Let’s create a system that benefits average Republicans, our candidates, and our party.”

He acknowledges that the state chair race earlier this year was a proxy vote of sorts over the question but maintains that circumstances have changed since he lost that election to Hays by a roughly 2-to-1 margin.

“The issue is that it was a proxy predicated on big money,” Athanasopoulos told Colorado Politics. “There was a belief that the big-money people were telling us this is what they want, so if Republicans vote for Jeff, the floodgates will open, the money will be delivered. The problem is, the big money hasn’t delivered.”

In his letter, Athanasopoulos argues that Democratic candidates are outraising Republicans “by a huge margin” in contested primaries and points to deficit spending by state GOP committees in the last quarter to bolster his contention the party is in trouble.

“Right now we’re having a crisis of brand identity. There’s no enthusiasm for Republican candidates,” he said, adding that Republicans are down more than 3,000 voters statewide since the beginning of the year.

Active Democratic voter registration has dropped since January by about the same amount, according to the Colorado secretary of state’s office, while the number of active unaffiliated voters has jumped by more than 38,000 over the same period. (As of Aug. 1, the state had a total of 3,338,177 active registered voters, nearly evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters, with unaffiliated voters holding a slight lead.)

“While this may not be a full-blown crisis at the moment, you can read the tea leaves and see one is coming,” Athanasopoulos said. “We’re raising half the money the Democrats are raising. We are selling a product people do not want to buy. How do we excite Republicans, how do we get them to volunteer their time and effort?”

The answer, he said, is to pull out of the primary and amend the party’s bylaws to let any registered Republican who attends precinct caucus register as a voting delegate to the GOP’s state assembly.

“Let’s give voters a reason to be Republican again,” Athanasopoulos said.

He dismissed the argument that dropping the primary would alienate unaffiliated votes.

“No matter what we do, the Democrats will criticize us, they will attack us,” he said. “I’m not saying we keep the current system. We create a new system focused on turning out as many voters as possible for Republicans in 2018 – incentivize candidates to go out and register more Republicans, mobilize more Republicans. They’re going to have to go out and directly talk to voters, hear their concerns, talk about why they should be Republicans. Motivate candidates to do what they should be doing instead of focusing on raising money that isn’t there.”

Hays said the party doesn’t need to cancel the primary in order to reach out to new voters.

“We’re going to go out there, and we’re going to aggressively try to activate Republicans,” he said. “We’re going to aggressively reach out and listen.”

Hays added that he welcomes a debate on the question at the September meeting.

“They want to discuss this, they want to have a vote on it,” he said. “Part of my role as chairman is to make sure minority voices get heard as well, and I do think they are minority voices.”