Yellow and red annotations are by Marilyn Marks

-----Original Message----From: Chairman House [mailto:steve@cologop.org]

Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2016 9:01 AM
To: County Chairs and Executive Committee
Subject: Re: State Assembly
County Chairman
Please don't forward this until we give you the go ahead. We do not want to
circumvent the legislature and their work.
Today the Colorado Legislature will introduce a bill reinstating a
presidential primary. This bill was sponsored by Representative Tim Dore and
Representative Dominick Moreno. It does not eliminate the caucus at all and
the caucus could only be eliminated if the membership of our party decided
that not the legislature.
The bill contains two major provisions. The first is the reintroduction of a
presidential primary (no mention made of the massive state primary impact
from unaffiliated voters) and the second is a new pathway to affiliation for
unaffiliated voters to affiliate and then participate in a presidential primary.
This is not an open primary bill nor do we or the democrat party want an
open primary.
Most understand why the presidential primary is coming up now, given the
change in rules by the RNC to a binding straw poll, which is now our only
option, and the desire for people to participate at a higher level needs to be
addressed. The other option would be to try and do a bound straw poll, which
is a primary, and is not feasible realistically. [A binding straw poll is NOT a
primary.]
So why do anything right now? Better Colorado is authoring a ballot
initiative, numbered 98 that has been approved by the title board. That
initiative opens with the concept that "since all Coloradan's pay taxes that
pay for a primary in our state, all Coloradan's should be able to
participate in a primary election". This is a pure open primary [it is NOT an
open primary, but a semi-closed primary] and early
indications are that it would pass easily with the vote of unaffiliated
voters and become part of our state constitution. [It has NO impact on the
constitution. It is statutory and does not become part of the constitution.]
This process is in part an
attempt to eliminate that initiative because it would do great harm to both
major political parties. No reason to be affiliated if this passes. [????
Unaffiliated could hold no party offices or have Republican ballot access.]
When

people affiliated for the purpose of voting in a primary, statistics in

other states show that 80% stay affiliated or at least vote for the party
they affiliated with. We would get the data on who did this affiliation and
that would be very useful.
Please feel free to ask any questions. I am absolutely opposed to open
Primaries [And ballot initiative #98 is not one] but I am also very aware of
the risk of not doing anything to
defend ourselves.
Thanks
Steve
Sent from my iPad