On August 30, a lower state court ruled that even though major parties in Colorado can nominate candidates who haven’t been a member of that party for a year, qualified minor parties do not have the same right. The decision means that the Libertarian Party nominee for Sheriff of Arapahoe County is off the ballot. The party is appealing to the Colorado Supreme Court. The case is Libertarian Party of Colorado v Doty, 06-cv-4768, Arapahoe Dist. Court.

Even the Colorado major parties were once hampered by the one-year rule, but the Colorado Democratic Party won a ruling in 1988 that the one-year rule is unconstitutional, as applied to parties that don’t want it applied to them. In the current case, the judge refused to apply the 1988 ruling to the Libertarian Party because, back in 1991, before the Libertarian Party was a qualified minor party, the State Supreme Court had upheld the one-year disaffiliation law as applied to unqualified parties.