The Colorado Republican State Central Committee is composed of party officers from each of the 64 counties, and Republican elected officials, and bonus members. The bonus members for each county are based on how many people voted for the Republican nominee (for the office at the top of the ballot) in the last election. The provision for bonus members says that for each 10,000 votes for the Republican nominee, that county gets another 2 bonus members.
The provision for bonus members is the only mechanism to make membership on the Central Committee roughly proportionate to population. Because Colorado, like almost all states, has many relatively low-population counties and a much smaller number of high-population counties, a committee based entirely on county party officers and elected officials would give a huge majority on the Committee to the small-population counties.
This year, the Republican nominee for Governor only polled 199,034 votes, because most Republican voters voted for the Constitution Party nominee, Tom Tancredo. A normal Republican gubernatorial vote in Colorado is approximately 800,000 votes. As a result of the low vote for the Republican gubernatorial nominee, the Republican State Central Committee, which normally has approximately 400 members, has only 296 members, and they are disproportionately from low-population counties. See this analysis at Craig Steiner’s blog. In retrospect, the party ought to have made the formula dependent on the number of Republican registrants, instead of the gubernatorial vote.
P.R. and App.V. — NO fossil party hack committees from the pre-internet political Stone Age are needed.
Eventually the IAP will get major-party status, even if we don’t elect anybody to any major office, we will eventually have over 100,000+ registered voters.
I agree with Cody Quirk in that the IAP as well as the California AIP (and any party with “Independent” or “Independence” in its name) will grow faster in registration than the doctrinaire parties, i.e. Libertarian, Green, etc.
If one will just look at the “stats” right now, all parties with either of those words in or part of their name have more registrants than other 3rd parties. From New York’s Independence Party to Alaska’s Independence Party – two parties “miles apart” philosphically in some ways – they are growing. Even with the disorganization in the California AIP, they are growing. And least of all, in Florida, where the Independent Party of Florida has no formal organization and has not ever run a state-wide candidate, they still have over 280,000 registrants and are legally recognized by the Florida Secretary of State as a politial party with the right to hold an Independent Primary.
My hope is that all of these parties will become “populist” parties – and not be an echo of the “conservative” GOP. And of course, I don’t want them to become an appendage of the “liberal” Democratic party either.
There is a magnetic appeal of “Independent” or “Independence” labels and despite the rattlings of some, their is a philosophical underpinning of these two labels. People who hold these labels over “Libertarian,” or “Green,” do have more in common than they disagree on.
I just wish the national Constitution Party would wake up and realize this instead of wanting to live back in 1776 with it’s narrow doctrine. They are never going anywhere nationally with such a narrow-based label.