Jefferson County Republicans were planning to meet bright and early March 28 at the Colorado School of Mines Green Center in Golden for that biennial ritual of partisan politics, the county assembly.

With only a couple of contested primaries in the battleground county, it would have been a relatively simple endeavor, bringing together hundreds of Republicans – including party officers, candidates and the 583 delegates elected a few weeks earlier at precinct caucuses – to hear some speeches and cast votes, mostly by acclamation.

There would also be a chance to rub shoulders with like-minded Republicans, fire up the ground soldiers ahead of what promises to be a barn burner of an election year.

The top of the GOP ticket is set – President Donald Trump won the state’s Super Tuesday presidential primary by an overwhelming margin, and U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner is unopposed for the nomination in his bid for a second term – but there was other business to conduct, including winnowing aspiring delegates to the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., this summer.

But that was before the coronavirus pandemic turned life upside down this month, with restriction piling upon restriction, first making it impossible to hold large meetings and eventually effectively confining Coloradans to their homes after Gov. Jared Polis issued a stay-at-home order effective March 26, just days before the scheduled Republican assembly.

Politicians and officials with both major political parties swung into action weeks ago, making it possible to convene remotely to hold their assemblies and conventions – the latter comprising election of national convention delegates and the former covering everything else.

Some smaller counties were able to hold their gatherings under the new restrictions before more severe guidelines went into effect, but county officers in both parties have had to figure out how to do things virtually on the fly, with solutions ranging from sending out ballots in the mail to meeting in crowded conference calls.

In Jefferson County, the Republicans turned to one of their own, Matt Knoedler, a former state representative from Lakewood and an entrepreneur behind CaucusRoom. It’s  a social networking platform designed to give conservative Coloradans a place to gather online.

Knoedler and fellow state GOP operative Allen Fuller co-founded CaucusRoom late last year and, since its public rollout in October, have been steadily building a group of users hoping to find a place to talk politics without offending their liberal friends or sparking the kind of endless arguments that can consume other social networking sites.

It helps that the platform was designed to mimic the trappings of a county assembly, Knoedler says, making it relatively easy to flip the process and recreate an assembly online.

In a matter of weeks, county GOP officers and the owners of CaucusRoom have added features to the website and configured things to cover the bases of a county assembly, Knoedler and Jefferson County GOP chair Denise Mund told Colorado Politics.

“We certainly did not expect that we would play an official role when we made CaucusRoom, but we kind of modeled it after assemblies,” Knoedler said.

“When I was a candidate, I went through my caucus and assemblies, and those people that attended became my campaign team and my lifelong friends and supporters. We built CaucusRoom on the idea neighbors on the conservative side of the fence should be visiting each other about politics and mobilizing each other, the way caucuses do.”

The way it will work, once county delegates who weren’t already CaucusRoom members have created an account, they’ll be granted access to a chat room on the site that will function as the assembly floor, he said. The speakers – Mund and the other officers running the meeting, as well as the candidates and those nominating them – will appear in a Zoom teleconference embedded alongside the chat, and delegates will be able to vote in polls that appear on the page.

“Delegates can participate by raising an objection, seconding nominations, making a motion from the floor,” Knoedler said. “We can even set up votes on the fly,” he said, like if a delegate brings up a procedural challenge, though he added “the paint’s still wet on that feature.”

Only delegates will be allowed into the assembly chat room, but the whole thing, including the speakers’ video feed, is expected to be mirrored onto an external site, possibly YouTube, so that members of the public can observe the proceedings, the same way they could from the back of the hall at an in-person assembly.

Mund says it’s gone smoother than she could have hoped, particularly because Knoedler has participated in so many Jeffco assemblies, so he knows the procedures inside and out.

“It makes it a much more organized meeting,” she said. “It’s going to be more efficient than it usually is.”

One hurdle has been helping mostly older delegates – the average age of caucus-goers was 62 – become familiar with the online environment. The party has also sent out ballots in the mail to all the delegates, so those who won’t be able to log in can still weigh in that way.

Knoedler said the company isn’t charging anything for the Jeffco assembly but is in talks about serving as a host site for other assemblies and conventions – possibly upcoming Colorado congressional district meetings, maybe some confabs in other states, where their Republican parties are just beginning to grapple with having to hold their assemblies remotely.

“We’re a start-up, and they’re taking some risk to go with us, and we are improving some really important capabilities going forward,” Knoedler said. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity for the company, but we have a really heavy heart that people can’t get together in person. It’s just so hard for everyone, but we’re glad we’re able to help.”

Another advantage of holding the assembly online, he added, is that once it’s concluded, the delegates will have a ready-made community and can keep organizing online after the assembly.

North Jeffco Tea Party founder and county assembly delegate Jimi McFarland, who goes by the nickname Jimi Mack, gave it a thumbs-up after participating in a trial run with a few dozen other delegates several days before the assembly was set to convene.

“It seemed extremely user-friendly to me,” he said.

“Every now and then, there’s a silver lining to a tragedy. One thing that we’ve benefited from by having to go through this, is it has forced us to up our technical game. We should probably have explored electronic assemblies way before now so we wouldn’t be working out the bugs at the actual assembly, but here we are.”

Another plus, McFarland said, is that the county party can save the thousands of dollars it typically spends to rent a venue for an assembly.

He said it’s possible holding an assembly online could turn out to be preferable.

“I expect a few glitches, but maybe this is what we needed to push us into the digital era,” he said. “We might wind up eventually saying the pandemic is over, and we could meet in person if we wanted to, but, by now, we’ve got all the bugs worked out and could do this from now on. This may wind up being the new normal.”