Colorado Republican “leadership” continues to drive the party toward political impotence and irrelevance with its obsession to ban unaffiliated voters from voting in so-called “open primary” elections.

Stolen-election conspiracist Dave Williams, the new state chairman, has announced the Colorado Republican State Central Committee (CRC) will vote on Aug. 5 on whether to cancel the 2024 Republican primary election. And to accomplish this act of political suicide, they want to make a change in the committee’s voting rules that would make the old Soviet Politburo proud.

Voters passed Proposition 108 in 2016 which allows unaffiliated voters to vote in the primary election of their choice. Unaffiliated voters receive both parties’ primary ballots in the mail and they can choose one. Voting in both primaries nullifies both ballots.

The law also allows a state political party to cancel its primary election with a vote of 75% of the membership of its state central committee. Approximately 400 to 500 county party leaders and state and federal elected officials make up the CRC.

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Canceling the primary would confer the sole power to nominate Republican candidates to the caucus-assembly process. There are 931,000 registered Republicans in Colorado who are eligible to vote in a Republican primary election. Only about 10,000 Republican activists attend precinct caucuses with a final 3,000 ending up being delegates to the Colorado Republican State Assemby. 

Canceling the primary would essentially disenfranchise more than 900,000 Republicans who do not go to precinct caucuses. Of particular note, military personnel stationed around the world who are Colorado voters, not to mention law enforcement and other first responders who are on duty on caucus night, would have their primary vote taken away.

It would also ban more than 1.8 million unaffiliated voters, 47% of the electorate, from choosing to vote in the Republican primary.  Unaffiliated voters would receive only the Democratic primary ballot in the mail but not the Republican ballot. 

The CRC attempted to cancel the Republican primary in 2018, 2020 and 2022 and it failed all three times, falling well short of the required 75%.

But allies of Williams are proposing a change in the rules which would be unprecedented in its raw abuse of a voting process. These are the same people who contend the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

It is very difficult to get 75% of the CRC’s membership to ban the primary because only around 50% to 60% of the members even show up for a CRC meeting. 

Apparently finding inspiration from sham elections in the failed Soviet Union which only listed candidates endorsed by the Communist Party, allies of Williams are proposing any CRC member who does not show up for the meeting will be presumed as a vote to kill the 2024 Republican primary election. You read this correctly: if you are a voting CRC member who does not show up for the meeting on Aug. 5, your vote will be automatically cast for you to kill the 2024 Republican primary election.

Equally nonsensical is the claim by Williams and his conspiracy pals that allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in Republican primaries is why Republicans have suffered devastating defeats in the past three elections. Under the Williams logic, these unaffiliated voters helped nominate weak candidates over much stronger Trump loyalists who would have won.

Seriously, Williams thinks that stolen-election conspiracist Ron Hanks, who made videos of himself shooting a defunct copier with “Dominion” emblazoned on it to dramatize his commitment to expose the Chinese conspiracy that stole Colorado’s electoral votes from Trump, could have been elected to the Senate.  Dominion Voting Systems is the company that Williams, Hanks and the rest of the conspiracy crowd blame for Trump’s defeat in 2020. Dominion recently won a $757 million lawsuit against Fox News for airing false accusations against the company. More lawsuits against other entities are still to come.

Williams thinks the former Mesa County clerk, the criminally indicted Tina Peters, could have been elected secretary of state along with Greg Lopez who ran for governor promising he would pardon Peters if she is convicted at her trial in October.

Williams and his allies refuse to believe Trump defined every Republican candidate in every competitive race at every level in Colorado in 2018, 2020, and 2022 resulting in sweeping Democratic victories not seen since the 1930s during the Great Depression.

Trump’s approval rating in 2018 was in the mid-30s while his disapproval was in the mid-50s. He lost Colorado to Joe Biden by 14 points in 2020 which also took down U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner who unseated a Democratic incumbent in 2014.

The stench of Trump conspiracies enveloped every statewide Republican candidate in 2022 along with strong Republican candidates in the newly created 8th Congressional District and in seven competitive state Senate races.  Democrats now control the Colorado House by 49 to 16 and the Colorado Senate by 23 to 12.

Saying allowing unaffiliated voters to vote in the Republican primary caused these defeats is as ridiculous as saying the “open primary” causes acne. But maybe Williams will make that case at the CRC meeting in August.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who worked for U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong for nine years before managing campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.