Colorado Republicans voted Saturday to force the state party to cancel next year’s party primary and instead pick GOP nominees via party assemblies, but state party officers say the vote at a chaotic state central committee meeting in Aurora didn’t meet the legally required threshold, so the party will hold a primary election in 2026.

Supporters of “opting out” of the primary, however, insist that the vote was binding and say they’ll see the state party in court.

Confusion reigned after results were announced at 2 p.m. in the final moments of a five-hour meeting held inside a lecture hall at the University of Colorado Anschutz health sciences campus as campus police ordered Republicans to vacate the premises because they hadn’t rented the building past 1 p.m.

Immediately, both sides declared victory while also decrying an oftentimes tense meeting that featured booing, shouting and heated arguments over the sincerity of calls for party unity.

At issue is whether state Republicans will participate in next year’s semi-open primary, which allows unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in either major parties’ nominating election, under Proposition 108, a state ballot measure passed by voters in 2016. The law contains a provision that lets the parties opt out of the primary if 75% of their state central committee membership votes to do so.

While both major parties opposed the measure when it was on the ballot, state Democrats haven’t seriously considered canceling their primary since the initiative passed, maintaining that it would be foolish to snub the roughly half of the state’s electorate that isn’t affiliated with a party.

The state GOP, however, has voted on the question every two years since Proposition 108 became law and is currently challenging the measure in court, claiming it infringes on multiple constitutional rights. The party’s central committee has fallen short of the required threshold each time, though when roughly 65% of its membership voted in favor of opting out in 2023, supporters expressed optimism that the tide was turning.

That isn’t what happened at the Republicans’ meeting on Saturday. Instead, 226 of the GOP’s 507-member state central committee — about 45% of the total membership — voted for a motion to abide by a previous resolution in favor of opting out that was overwhelmingly adopted at the party’s 2024 state assembly.

While those 226 votes amounted to a majority at the meeting, with 196 voting against the motion, Republicans opposed to canceling the primary said the vote doesn’t satisfy the clear legal requirement, so has no effect.

Pointing to the statute, El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen, who voted against canceling the primary, said in a written statement that the opt-out supporters were hanging their hat on a flawed legal theory.

“That provision of law does not allow the idea of ratifying the vote of a different body and substituting a vote result by that other body (here, state assembly in 2024) and making that previous vote the official action of the SCC,” Allen wrote. “Such a result would be illegal.”

State GOP Chairman Brita Horn declined multiple interview requests but said Sunday through a spokesman that the party considers the matter settled and plans to go ahead with its primary election next year.

“Yesterday, the Colorado Republican State Central Committee met to vote on whether to change from nominating candidates through a primary election to nominating them through an assembly or convention. That statute mandates that at least three-fourths of the total membership of the party’s state central committee vote to do so,” Horn said.

“No such vote occurred yesterday; there will be a Republican primary in Colorado in 2026,” she added.

Mineral County GOP Chairman Eric Grossman, a member of the state central committee and a vocal supporter of opting out, disputed Horn’s interpretation of events. He told Colorado Politics on Sunday that the argument will probably have to be resolved in court.

At the start of the Republicans’ meeting on Saturday, Grossman handed Horn copies of a lawsuit filed Friday by a fellow Republican seeking to compel the state party to comply with the resolution adopted by delegates to the state GOP assembly a year earlier.

Under state law, Colorado’s major political parties must notify the Colorado Secretary of State if they plan to opt out of the following year’s primary by Oct. 1 in odd-numbered years.

Grossman told Colorado Politics that the lawsuit will come into play if Horn doesn’t do that.

“That’s why, ultimately, the paperwork was served,” Grossman said. “There were a fair amount of people who felt the leadership could not be trusted to complete the transaction.”

Added Grossman: “It’s obvious to anybody who watched yesterday’s meeting, a group of people who don’t want it are running the party, but the body of the people want it done, which is a majority. The number of the majority is being haggled over.”

In his statement, Allen said the parliamentary and legal maneuvering that pushed the meeting into the afternoon prevented the central committee from holding a formal vote on opting out.

“Essentially, they ran out the clock on themselves,” Allen said. “And they did this on purpose. Confusion resulted from the voting results … but the substance and outcome are absolutely clear. They knew going in they didn’t have the 75% required to actually opt out. So instead of allowing a vote on that question, they sowed confusion and forced a vote on a separate question. Now, they will use that confusion to sow further dissent and division.”