Last year, Colorado voters passed an initiative that changes Colorado primaries from closed primaries to semi-closed primaries. The initiative said independents could vote in any party’s primary. However, the initiative did not clarify whether independent voters had to make a public choice of which primary ballot they were choosing.
On May 8, SB 305 passed the Senate and a House Committee, and it will probably pass the House on May 10. It says that independents must make a public choice of which party’s primary they are choosing. The major parties, the only ones that normally have primaries in Colorado, desire to know who is voting in their primaries. The bill says that the independent voter will then be considered to be a member of the party whose primary ballot they chose, but then they are assumed to be independents again (automatically) when the next primary comes along. See this story.
Richard (and anybody else who knows offhand), does any party’s ballot status in Colorado depend on how many voters are considered members of that party?
Yes. Colorado qualified parties remain qualified if they continue to have at least 1,000 registered voters. They also remain on the ballot if they poll at least 1% for any statewide race at either of the last two elections.
Thank you, Richard. So could this new bill hurt the status of Colorado state parties not qualified for the primaries? Or is there enough distinction between “independent”/”unaffiliated” voters and members of “non-primary parties”, so that only the former and not the latter are going to get to vote in the primaries anyway? (To put it another way, could having voters lured into voting in the primaries now cost a non-primary party its ballot status?)
That is a theoretical danger but practically speaking, it is not important. The three qualified minor parties in Colorado have far more than 1,000 registrants. Late last year Libertarians had 37,880; Green had 11,355; and Constitution had 9,718.
Thank you again. The danger (if any) would also depend on when the count is taken, I suppose — and maybe on whether there’s a way for voters to actively re-declare their affiliations without having to wait for the next primary to automatically “re-set” them.