Not 2002, August of 2015
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was first published on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2015 at 2:06 p.m. Please see Angry Donald Trump blasts Colorado GOP results as “totally unfair,” published on Sunday, April 10, 2016.
Colorado will not vote for a Republican candidate for president at its 2016 caucus after party leaders approved a little-noticed shift that may diminish the state’s clout in the most open nomination contest in the modern era.
The GOP executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference poll after the national party changed its rules to require a state’s delegates to support the candidate who wins the caucus vote.
The move makes Colorado the only state so far to forfeit a role in the early nomination process, according to political experts, but other caucus states are still considering how to adapt to the new rule.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28700919/colorado-republicans-cancel-2016-presidential-caucus-vote
Colorado has been using the caucus method for choosing their delegates since 2002. Up until this year, they also held a straw poll at the precinct caucuses, but the results were not binding - no delegates were allocated based on the straw poll. Last year, the RNC said if they held the straw poll, the results had to be binding, so they chose not to hold the straw poll. That was the change made in August of 2015. It made no changes to the way the delegates were selected.