About 200 Donald Trump supporters chanted and railed about what they called the unfairness of the Republican Party, arguing that its loyal members are corrupt and un-American at a rally on the state Capitol steps Friday afternoon.

Jim Sutter of Denver led cheers at intervals.

“Stop the steal,” he called out loudly, and the Trump fans answered back.

Sutter told the crowd he had been in Colorado only since 1991, after “crossing the border from Wyoming.”

“Were you legal?” someone shouted back, causing a ripple of laughter.

Protestors said they had demands: Hold an “emergency straw poll,” or the Republican National Committee should lock out Colorado’s delegates from the nominating convention in Cleveland.

Failing that, they said they would march on the convention, stopping short of a call for violence.

Trump supporters criticized the state caucus system that resulted in their candidate failing to pick up any of the Colorado’s 34 delegates.

“It wasn’t an election,” said John Hart of Commerce City. “It was a selection.”

On Twitter this week and in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Trump has lambasted the Colorado Republican Party for canceling its preference poll at the March 1 caucus.

State GOP chairman Steve House disputed protesters’ claims.

The notion that any secret group of politicians colluded behind closed doors against one presidential candidate last August by eliminating the straw poll is completely false, he said.

A rally to support the Republican Party drew about 40 people to the state GOP headquarters in Greenwood Village on Friday afternoon.

“We need to straighten out the confusion, take out the crazy, and just move on,” said Mark Baisley of the party’s base that is splintering over Trump.

Keith Nobles said state GOP leaders have been threatened by Trump supporters’ intimidation tactics.

“That is not how we do our politics,” he said. “People have a fundamental misunderstanding of the process. Everything in this building was voted on. There were meetings held and people were elected. The people that are angry are the people who didn’t get involved” in the caucus process.

Speakers at the Capitol took turns with a bullhorn to explain what they saw as improprieties at their precinct caucus or heavy-handed party tactics to keep Trump from winning.

Many urged Trump to form his own political party.

“Where he goes, I go,” explained Becky Ellis of Colorado Springs.

Colorado has looked at returning to a state primary, as it did from 1992 to 2000, when state leaders decided to revert to the caucus system. The Colorado caucus system goes back to at least 1912.

A bipartisan bill is being drafted in the legislature with input from both state parties.

“There’s a lot of support for doing this,” said House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, a Democrat from Boulder County. “It would be just the presidential primary. … We have the opportunity, as I understand it from the state parties, to have that presidential primary fairly early on.”

Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, jbunch@denverpost.com or @joeybunch