The Colorado Republican Party has filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Jena Griswold to overturn what the party sees as an unconstitutional open primary law.
“The Colorado Republican Party is suing to protect our right to have Republican voters choose our Republican nominees as guaranteed in the First Amendment,” the party said in a statement.
In 2016, Colorado Proposition 108 was passed by voters that allows unaffiliated voters to participate in primary elections in Colorado.
This is different from what the Alaska Republican Party had up until Ballot Measure 2 passed in 2020. Alaska Republicans allowed unaffiliated voters to take part in their primaries, but didn’t allow voters who were members of other parties.
The Colorado lawsuit is represented by attorney John Eastman, who previously represented Donald Trump after the 2020 election. The Colorado GOP claims that Proposition 108 infringes upon the party’s rights of free speech and association.
It’s the second time that Colorado Republicans have challenged the measure. A suit was filed by a handful of Colorado Republican officials, but was dismissed by a federal judge in 2022.
This lawsuit, however, has the full support of the party, which has new leadership under Chairman Dave Williams.
The party’s argument in the lawsuit says that unaffiliated voters participating in Republican primaries favor moderate candidate.
While the litigation is pending, Williams is also trying another method for extracting the party from the open primary. Prop. 108 allows parties to opt out of the system if three-quarters of the party’s central committee votes to do so. That vote is scheduled for September.
Alaska voters, under Ballot Measure II in 2020, made it so the Alaska Republican Party cannot pick its own nominees. Now, the party’s nominees are chosen by all voters. Constitutionalists see this as an infringement on the party’s First Amendment right of association, because people who are not part of the private association are getting to choose who represents the association.
After Alaska’s ballot measure passed in 2020, members of the Republican, Libertarian, and Alaskan Independence parties filed the lawsuit. The ballot measure was ultimately upheld by the liberally biased Alaska Supreme Court, leading to what is in place today — a completely open primary and a ranked-choice general election.
But Alaskans for Honest Elections, a group of local activists, has been trying to bring the matter back to voters with another ballot initiative. The group says it has 85% of the signatures it needs for a ballot initiative in 2024. But Alaskans for Honest Elections is facing nuisance lawsuits by Alaskans for Better Elections, the dark money group that brought the current system to voters, won their approval, and is now dedicated to defending open primaries and ranked-choice general elections.
It’s an interesting pushback. Will be interesting to see how/if the argument gains traction.
Gonna be an uphill climb I think.
USSC decided it in the Gray Davis case 15 years ago or so. It is black letter law that a party can choose its nominees. All we need is a Governor with gonads and some decent lawyering, but it will have to go the federal route and all the way to the USSC.
We’ve needed a governor with gonads since Dunleavy first took office.
‘Now, the party’s nominees are chosen by all voters. Constitutionalists see this as an infringement on the party’s First Amendment right of association, because people who are not part of the private association are getting to choose who represents the association.’
Exactly. You don’t have to belong to a political party. A political party is not the government. But if you so choose, the people you pick to represent your party should be chosen by the people in the party. It’s really a simple concept. If you don’t like the chosen candidate of a party you are always free to vote for whomever you wish in the general election, change political party or change the party from within and its planks and/or party nominations. It takes hard work to do some of those things but if you do the work, effect change, stand behind your candidates, then people come in from outside & hijack everything you just accomplished by ignoring it, the active members of the party no longer control it. Essentially the party is stolen from its members for the lack of a brand that most agreed on.
You could compare parties to unions. Ideally unions represent workers. They create positions (planks) related to working conditions that the members vote on and representatives put forward. If non members could come in and represent themselves as union reps, just on their say, that would not be tolerated by a union.
Or members of a church have to decide an issue. Many times those business decisions are ultimately decided by the church members and not just anyone off the street. Like who their pastor will be.
This seems pretty clear to me.
“Now, the party’s nominees are chosen by all voters.”
This is a false statement. The first-round election that is so unfortunately referred to as a “nonpartisan open primary” is not at all a nomination process. It only retains the winnowing-of-the-field function of the old primary, so should not be called a primary. It should be called a first-round election. Parties can hold nominations on their own. They don’t need government to supervise these proceedings any longer.
So is Porcaro paying you to spout this?
Why do you think so many Democrat candidates decided to switch party to the Independent Party?
They thought they were going to fool voters into voting Democrat. Think: Al Gross.
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A closed Republican Primary puts the Democrat Party out of business in so many ways.
I am not savvy in all of this but was the push in our own state, by leftists, for ‘rigged’ choice voting, to also get rid of oarty primaries in order to dilute our votes when we do not have one nominated candidate? I was not aware there had been a lawsuit that had been lost. We have to get rid of RCV.
“The Colorado Republican Party is suing to protect our right to have Republican voters choose our Republican nominees as guaranteed in the First Amendment,”
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Right there. Can anyone explain to me why a card carrying member of the Democrat party should have any say, at any time, in who the Republicans select to represent them in the general election. Or the other way around?
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If you want to be independent/non declared, OK, fine be undeclared. But realize that also removes your ability to vote on candidates in the primaries. Do not like it? Choose a party.
It’s been a proven point of law that political parties are private entities. This allows them to legally enforce internal rules on their members.
In the past, if more than one member of a party wanted to run for an office, the first (the primary) election was used to chose a single winner from each PARTY. This ONLY applied to PARTY candidates. Which meant that in the next (the general) election only one candidate from each party AND any candidates that were completely independent of any political parties will be listed on that ballot. It’s important to realize that the traditional primary elections only affected party affiliated candidates and had no bearing on ANY candidate that wished to run as a true independent.
But, with RCV in place, any voter, affiliated with any party, is allowed to vote for any candidate. How is this legal/right/just to allow voters from outside a party to have any impact on whom a party chooses as a primary winner? RCV also has the effect of allowing second and third place candidates to have a spot on the general election ballot, which means, one of these second/third place candidates will appear on the general election ballot just as long as they had more ‘primary election’ votes than someone else, in spite of another member of the same party with the highest vote count. Since when do we wish to vote for losers?
Note the lies told by RCV supporters that somehow RCV magically ‘opens up’ the general election to more candidate choices and RCV allows better choices for independent voters. First off, if your chosen candidate loses in a primary you have the option of writing in that name OR supporting a different candidate during the general election. As for true independent voters, your lack of party affiliation is your choice, and results in you being blocked from any political party’s business. So, suck it up, as your personal choice has left you with the candidates listed on the general election ballot.
Re: “…if your chosen candidate loses in a primary you have the option of writing in that name…”
Political parties are private organizations. They should not have any power to block the losers of their nominations from access to a public ballot with their name listed on the ballot like all other candidates. Furthermore, if the most preferred candidate of all voters loses a party’s nomination for a race, eliminating him or her form the general election ballot creates an election failure.
The present top-four system fails to give parties a right to free association which is to decide who can and cannot use the party’s name when they file and run. All parties need to work together to seize this power to delegate the use of their own name. I don’t believe this simple law is difficult to enact.
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