Colorado Republicans Ron Hanks and Scott Bottoms have filed suit to protect the GOP primary from Colorado’s largest voting bloc, citing the party’s constitutional right to lose elections in a smaller, more ideologically laminated room.
The lawsuit, reported by Ernest Luning, seeks to stop unaffiliated voters from participating in Republican primaries, a practice Colorado voters approved years ago because apparently normal people wanted some say before the general election presented them with two fully processed institutional products.
Party sources confirmed the goal is to restore confidence in the primary system by making sure fewer Coloradans can vote in it.
“We believe Republican nominees should be chosen by Republicans, consultants, county assemblies, five men named Doug, and whoever is still replying-all on the email chain,” said one official close to the effort. “Letting unaffiliated voters participate introduces chaos, moderation, electability, and other threats to the sacred process.”
Colorado’s unaffiliated voters have become the state’s dominant political species, outnumbering Democrats and Republicans while stubbornly refusing to buy the full cable package of either party’s bullshit. This has alarmed activists who prefer democracy in its boutique form: smaller, louder, easier to control, and held in a room with bad coffee.
Hanks and Bottoms are arguing, in effect, that a party should not be forced to let nonmembers help choose its nominees, especially when those nonmembers might select someone capable of speaking to voters outside a pancake breakfast in Fremont County.
Legal experts said the case raises an important question: whether political parties are private organizations, public election participants, or taxpayer-subsidized grievance clubs wearing flag pins.
“The primary belongs to the party,” said a constitutional scholar who asked not to be named because he still has to live near these people. “Except when the party wants public ballots, public election infrastructure, public legitimacy, and public money to administer the thing. Then it becomes a solemn civic institution until an unaffiliated voter shows up and ruins the vibe.”
The lawsuit arrives as Colorado Republicans continue their long-running experiment in diagnosing electoral failure as insufficient purity, rather than the possibility that normal voters can hear them. Consultants close to the matter said the party remains committed to broadening its appeal by identifying the broadest group of persuadable voters and telling them to piss off.
Supporters described the move as a defense of grassroots conservatives, a term now used to mean “the people already in the meeting before the public notices there was one.”
“We cannot allow random unaffiliated voters to distort the will of the Republican base,” said one activist. “That job belongs to insiders, assemblies, donor networks, and candidates who think losing by 12 points means the people are finally waking up.”
Election officials have not yet announced whether future GOP primaries will be conducted by ballot, voice vote, or asking the loudest guy in the church basement what God told him.
For now, the party’s message to unaffiliated Coloradans is clear: your vote matters deeply, just somewhere else.
Source: Ernest Luning
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