DENVER – Lawmakers are unlikely to pass a bill this session to address Colorado’s presidential nomination process, which is now entirely reliant on a precinct caucus system.

The sponsor of a Senate bill to create a presidential preference primary in mid-March of 2020, killed his own bill Monday because he couldn’t get enough votes in the Republican-controlled chamber to get it through.

“I couldn’t get consensus, and I need this to be a team effort,” Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, said Monday evening after laying over Senate Bill 216 until one day after the legislature adjourns until 2017.

Lundberg said he believes, like many of his constituents, that a primary would better serve voters wishing to have a say in who is the presidential nominee is for their party. His bill was seen as a compromise that would retain the caucus system and allow ballots being mailed to every registered voter in the state.

A House bill addressing the same issue is not likely to gain traction in the Senate either, Lundberg said.

“If we can’t get consensus on the most simple straightforward one, I don’t think we’re going to get consensus on one that’s got a lot more moving parts,” Lundberg said.

House Bill 1454 passed the House 43-22 on Monday after members voted to remove an amendment that critics say would circumvent the will of the people before they were even able to vote on several proposed initiatives in November. Only one Democrat, Rep. Dan Pabon, D-Denver, voted against the bill.

The rest were Republicans, including El Paso County representatives Terri Carver, Gordon Klingenschmittt, Lois Landgraf, Dan Nordberg, and Paul Lundeen, R-Monument.

Even without that amendment, the House version is more complex because it proposes primary elections become more open to unaffiliated voters by allowing them to temporarily affiliate before a primary and automatically revert back to unaffiliated status after the election.

If House Bill 1454 doesn’t make it to the floor of the Senate there will be no recorded vote to see who opposes and supports the measure.

Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman, D-Denver, lamented the end of the bill that she co-sponsored in the Senate.

“The people of Colorado want a change, and we had an opportunity this year to make it easier for every voter to participate in choosing our next President,” Guzman said. “Instead, by failing to act, Colorado voters will continue to be at risk of being left out of the process every four years. Colorado must act.”

Andy Cross