“Unaffiliated voters claim the majority.”

It wasn’t that many years ago when this March 5, 2024 headline in the Colorado Springs Gazette would have been unthinkable. Unaffiliated voters are now in the majority in El Paso County.

For decades, El Paso County was the massive Republican bulwark that fueled statewide election victories. El Paso County offset heavily Democratic Denver County, allowing Republican candidates to take the fight to the Jefferson County and Arapahoe County suburbs and other competitive counties while running up the score on the eastern plains and the Western Slope.

During this time, the state was accurately described as a third-third-third with Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters having roughly equal shares of the electorate.

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But the influx of 800,000 new residents in the last 14 years dramatically changed the overall Colorado electorate. Statewide, unaffiliated voters now number 1.8 million, or 48%. Democrats are at 1.2 million, or 27%, and Republicans at 900,000 are at 24%.

El Paso County was not immune to this sea change. Unaffiliated voters are now a majority at 50.3%, with Republicans at 30.28% and Democrats at 17.51%.

Despite this stark reality of unaffiliated power, the Colorado Republican Party actually went into U.S. District Court to try to prevent unaffiliated voters from voting in one of the two major party primaries under Proposition 108, which was strongly passed by voters in 2016.

Under a new chairman elected in 2023, Dave Williams, the state party announced it would raise $200,000 to challenge Proposition 108 in federal court.  It hired John Eastman, the lawyer who devised the scheme to try to deny Joe Biden the presidency by having Vice President Mike Pence reject the results of the Electoral College on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Eastman is fighting disbarment in California and is under indictment in Georgia for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Eastman was also suspended in 2021 from his duties as the director of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado for his role in the events of Jan. 6.

The case brought by Eastman and his legal sidekick, stolen-election conspiracist Randy Corporon, to steal the votes of unaffiliated voters was soundly rejected by U.S. District Court Judge Philip Brimmer.

As the number of unaffiliated voters continues to increase while registered Democrats and Republicans continue to decline, both parties seem to be in a race to the bottom.

Democrats are increasingly under the influence of Democratic Socialists who are far to the left of traditional liberals and have donned the mantle of antisemitism while parroting the violent chants of pro-Hamas terrorists.

The Denver City Council and the Fort Collins City Council have had their proceedings interrupted and forcibly adjourned by these leftists calling for a “ceasefire” in Gaza, which is a ruse to destroy Israel. 

There are increasing numbers of these far-left activists being elected to the state legislature and city councils. Democratic leaders seem intimidated and increasingly deferential to their extremism.

The best national Democrats can do is again nominate the failed, doddering, immensely unpopular President Joe Biden who was first elected to the Senate in 1972.

Meanwhile, Republicans are once again nominating a defeated former president, Donald Trump, who was silent for hours while rioters who counted themselves as his supporters ransacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”  Trump relentlessly contends the 2020 presidential race was stolen from him despite none of the crackpot conspiracy theories promoted by his loyalists having any credibility.

The Colorado Republican Party is being led by a cabal of political grifters intent on expunging any Republican who does not worship at their altar of political purity.  They see Republican campaign contributions as their personal political piggy bank to unethically influence Republican primary elections in violation of state party bylaws. Dave Williams refuses to resign as state chairman despite being a candidate for Congress.

Democrats are careening toward the left-wing cliff while being empowered by a politically impotent Republican Party.

The current political process in Colorado seems unable to restore the kind of political balance that defined Colorado politics for 40 years. Colorado voters are voting with their feet by rejecting both parties and registering as unaffiliated.

It is time to consider restoring some ideological and political balance in Colorado by reforming the current playgrounds of the political extremes. The caucus-assembly process was once a haven for thriving neighborhood debates leading to the nomination of candidates at every level; it is now dominated by a few thousand activists on the extremes of both parties.

Though allowing unaffiliated voters to choose to vote in one of the major party primaries has been a welcome and effective reform for the past six years, perhaps it is time for unaffiliated voters, who will soon be a clear majority, to have access to both parties in an open primary election.

Colorado voters deserve to have a political nominating process that will restore political balance, not promote the political fringes.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who worked for U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong for nine years before managing campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.