DENVER — A new report from the nonprofit Courageous Colorado found Colorado’s caucus process is outdated and excludes unaffiliated voters.
“We realized that Colorado is a real outlier nationally," Amy Spicer, the author of the report and chief impact officer for Courageous Colorado, said. "There are only three states that have systems that are convention-like systems that place candidates on the primary ballot. The vast majority of states stopped doing this over a century ago.”
▶️ Watch: Denver7's Jessica Porter talks with Courageous Colorado Chief Impact Officer Amy Spicer about the report's findings
A caucus is the voting process parties use to select candidates for the ballot.
Spicer examined 26 caucuses and assemblies across both parties during the 2026 election cycle for the report titled "Colorado's Closed Road to the Ballot: How Caucuses, Assemblies, and Petitions Shape the Colorado Democracy Paradox."
She found counties that don’t post public notices of their meetings online, parties using dysfunctional voting apps, unreliable paper ballot systems, and burnt-out delegates from party procedures that can take hours over multiple weekends.
One Democratic state assembly delegate told Courageous Colorado the process requires showing up four separate times before casting a primary ballot.
“We found that it was incredibly confusing for voters,” Spicer said. “People just don't know when they're happening, why they should go, or the amount of time it's going to take them once they're there.”
Despite 52% of Colorado voters being registered as unaffiliated, they are excluded from participating in both parties’ caucus process, the nonprofit found.
Courageous Colorado is calling on both parties to find solutions to reform the current system.
“We can look at reducing the role of the caucus and assembly process, we could get rid of the caucus and assembly process," Spicer said. "We could do something like go to an open primary system, where every voter gets a ballot that has all of the candidates.”
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