According to this article, the Colorado Libertarian Party state convention of March 20 was fairly closely divided between two candidates for the party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate. So, under a 2007 election law, there will be a primary for the party to choose its Senate nominee.
Before 2007, primaries were reserved for parties that had polled 10% for Governor. Other ballot-qualified parties were to nominate entirely by convention. But the 2007 change said that even qualified minor parties should have a primary, when their state conventions were fairly closely divided for one particular nomination.
The 2010 Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate will be the first statewide primary for a party, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, in Colorado, since 1916, when the Progressive Party had its own primary.
The 2010 Colorado primaries are on August 12. There were 9,489 registered Libertarians in Colorado in October 2008. One of the U.S. Senate candidates is Macyln Stringer; see his web page here. The other is John Finger; see his page here.
The article notes that there will also be a contested Libertarian primary for governor.
One of the gubernatorial candidates is Dan “Kilo” Sallis. I wonder if his nickname refers to what I suspect it does.
The change was made in 2003.
Colorado has always held its major party conventions before the primary, and candidates qualify for the primary based on their support at the convention (30%+ support, unless no one qualifies, in which case the top 2 qualify). In addition, candidate may qualify for the primary by petition. Before 2003, minor party conventions were the equivalent to the major party primary.
The change in 2003 made the minor party nominating process equivalent to that of the major parties, with the distinction that if only one candidate was designated for an office, he would become the nominee and no primary would be held.
While candidates minor party candidates can be nominated by petition, it may be much easier to qualify via the convention. For example, a statewide candidate would require 1000 signatures. The news article said that under 100 persons participated in the Libertarian state convention.
Wouldn’t be easier to just let corporate “persons” purchase a nomination without the expense of a convention? That approach would seem much less passionate and more reasonable than any convention I’ve ever seen.