A move to close the 2018 Republican primaries to unaffiliated voters was stopped Saturday after a majority of the party leaders voted against the proposal during a Central Committee Meeting.
Voters approved , overhauling how major-party candidates are selected in the Colorado and allowing the state’s 1.4 million unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in either the Republican or Democratic primaries.
to opt out by a 75 percent vote of its entire central committee. The party did not have enough members present to reach that percentage, making the move dead before the votes had been cast, Colorado Republican Party spokesman Daniel Cole said.
Regardless, those present voted and opt-out proponents only garnered 33 percent of the vote, Cole said. The remaining 67 percent voted to keep the primaries open.
Had the proposal passed, the . Instead, the Republican candidate will receive the party’s nomination by winning the most votes in the June 26 primary.
The move to close the primaries could technically come up again before June 26 but Cole said that won’t happen.
A motion to sue to overturn Proposition 8 also went down by the same margin, Cole said.