The Colorado Republican Party’s decision last summer to jettison a presidential poll at its caucus on Tuesday looks worse with every passing day.

Except for the actual delegates to July’s national convention, Colorado Republicans who want to have a say in the future of their party have mostly been stripped of a role in the most interesting and surprising nominating struggle in decades.

They’ll stand on the sidelines on Super Tuesday while other states determine whether Donald Trump continues his march toward a possible nomination or whether his rivals can slow him down.

Meanwhile, local airwaves have been featuring ads on behalf of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, since the Democrats are still holding a traditional caucus at which participants get to signal their support for a candidate. It’s known as democracy. The Colorado Republican executive committee needs to reacquaint itself with the concept.

GOP leaders have never provided a satisfactory reason for forgoing a presidential preference poll, although party chairman Steve House suggested on radio at one point that too many Republicans would otherwise flock to their local caucus.

Imagine that: party officials fearing that an interesting race might propel thousands of additional citizens to participate. But of course that might dilute the influence of elites and insiders. You can see why that could upset the faint-hearted.

By contrast, far-sighted party leaders should have welcomed the extra attention to their caucus and the potential activism on the party’s behalf it would have spawned.

Admittedly, one thing has changed since the GOP executive committee made its decision on a preference poll: It appears somewhat more likely today that no candidate will have wrapped up the nomination by convention time. But even if that ends up being the case, it will be no great boon to Colorado’s uncommitted delegates. If no candidate has enough votes on the first ballot to secure the nomination, delegates will be free to vote for anyone they like anyway.

It’s bad enough the two parties in Colorado don’t have presidential primaries in which many more voters would participate. The caucuses already limit participation to a narrow slice of the electorate. But the fact that the Republican leadership then took matters a step further and deprived even that narrow slice of voters a voice in one of the most competitive, consequential political nominations in memory – and perhaps in history – is mindboggling.

It’s likely that some Republicans who show up Tuesday will be surprised to learn their presidential preference is of no consequence. Perhaps someone should be on hand to explain to them why party democracy is apparently too disruptive and unpredictable to be trusted.

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