DENVER – Colorado lawmakers are taking a mulligan on an effort to institute a presidential preference primary for the 2020 election. 

A House bill introduced last month became bogged down in party politics and by a complex amendment that attempted to circumvent a vote of the people. A new bill was introduced in the Senate Friday morning and unanimously passed its first committee a few hours later.

Senate Bill 216 has three working days to get through both the House and the Senate, but it has bipartisan sponsors in Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman, D-Denver, Rep. Tim Dore, R-Elizabeth, and House Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City.

“There is a bill in the House which – on my side of the aisle in the Senate – we weren’t too happy with,” Lundberg said. “I, for the last couple of weeks, have been trying to figure out is there another way, is there a strike below?”

Instead, Lundberg drafted an entirely new and much simpler bill that adds a presidential primary election to the third Tuesday in March. The bill does not address the question of whether unaffiliated voters should be able to participate in that primary.

That was the issue with House Bill 1454. Dore introduced an amendment that tied it to the outcome of possible questions on the November ballot if voters had chose to open the election so unaffiliated voters would receive both Republican and Democratic ballots. Dore’s bill would have changed that so unaffiliated voters would get a postcard informing them they could temporarily affiliate with either party for the election.

Curtis Hubbard, campaign manager for Let Colorado Vote, said attempting to change the outcome of an election before the vote showed lawmakers were “out of touch.” Let Colorado Vote has four potential ballot measures for the November ballot but the group – spearheaded by the Denver Metro Chamber – hasn’t decided which to move forward.

Two would open all of Colorado’s primary elections to unaffiliated voters by providing different opt-out measures for party officials; one would open all primaries but not provide an opt out; and the third would restore the presidential preference primary and make it open to unaffiliated voters.

It will probably cost around $5 million to hold the standalone preference primary, lawmakers said.

“We continue to believe that, when voters are asked to pay for an election, they should be able to participate in that election – whether that’s a presidential primary or any primary,” Hubbard said. “This bill continues to leave out more than 40 percent of the voters in the state.”

House Bill 1454 is waiting third reading in the House, where it stalled after the complicated amendment. It’s unclear whether the House will consider it before the session concludes on Wednesday. Senate Bill 216 will be heard in the Finance Committee because of the cost of the election, and if it passes, will go to the Senate floor.

Colorado State Capitol Building

Gabriel Eckert