This is the uplifting and forward-thinking agenda of the six candidates for Colorado Republican state chairman:

Defend conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from defeated Donald Trump including here in Colorado where he lost by 14 points.

Go to court to repeal the ability of 1.7 million unaffiliated voters to choose to vote in the Republican primary election while they would continue to receive the Democratic primary ballot.

End mail ballots and require voters to only vote in person at precinct locations on Election Day even though nearly 80% of voters proactively signed up for the permanent absentee ballot before all mail balloting was enacted.

Trying to justify this misguided agenda, some of these candidates invoke the cliché that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again after massive Republican losses in the past three elections. But these six candidates have their faces firmly planted in the rear-view mirror as they cling to conspiracy theories and seek to roll back changes to the election process made by Colorado voters over the past decade.

Meanwhile, they all seem to be oblivious to the dramatic changes to the Colorado electorate over the past 12 years that resulted in the rejection of Republican candidates who were defined by Donald Trump.

After decades of roughly equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters, Colorado is now 47% unaffiliated, 28% Democratic, and only 25% Republican.

Rather than trying to build a Colorado Republican Party that can support strong conservative candidates who can win general elections, these candidates are focused inward trying to make the party more “pure” in their image regardless of how irrelevant the party has increasingly become due to the stench of Donald Trump’s incessant insistence the election was stolen from him.

Here are the contestants for state chair at the March 11 Colorado Republican State Committee meeting:

Erik Aadland declared the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” during his aborted campaign for the U.S. Senate before unsuccessfully running in the Seventh Congressional District. He strongly supports going to court to ban unaffiliateds from voting in the Republican primary.

Kevin Lundberg is a former state legislator from Larimer County who unsuccessfully ran in the Second Congressional District.

He believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and he wants to ban unaffiliateds from voting in the Republican primary.

Tina Peters is the former Mesa County Clerk who has been criminally indicted by a Republican District Attorney for illegally tampering with election equipment and she goes on trial in August.

Later this month she is also being tried for defying a court order that banned videoing in a courtroom and she resisted arrest as she attempted to kick the police officers.

Peters was soundly defeated in the Republican primary for Secretary of State in 2022.

Casper Stockham is described by Colorado Politics as a political consultant who ran four unsuccessful campaigns in three different U.S. House districts in the last decade.

He was fined by the Federal Election Commission in 2022 for campaign finance violations.

Dave Williams served as a state representative from Colorado Springs before unsuccessfully challenging incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn in 2022. Williams led a petition effort in 2021 alleging that Trump was the victim of “deep state” conspiracies.

Aaron Wood led the “Save Colorado Project” rally outside Colorado Republican headquarters this past November where speakers declared they would rid the party of so-called “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only), their favorite derogatory term for anyone who disagrees with them.

Speakers at the rally said “RINOs” were “liars, traitors, whores and ass wipes.”

They even attacked current Colorado Republican State Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown’s physical looks and alleged she had some work done on her face creating a “plastic smile.”

A few months later, one of the speakers at the rally suggested in an interview that, “it’s almost time to switch from ballots to bullets.”

The choice for state chairman is no choice at all.

Every one of these six candidates would drive the party into deeper oblivion with their conspiratorial, exclusionary and politically naïve agendas that are already repelling a rapidly changing Colorado electorate.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who worked for the late U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong for nine years before managing successful campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.