Those 60,000 didn’t vote for the candidates. Those fewer than 10% of CO Republicans voted for the people who selected the people who voted for delegates. How is the ordinary person who isn’t in the GOP country club supposed to know who is going to end up being a vote for their candidate? And of course most people with real life jobs and kids don’t have all day to go to conventions. The whole process is designed to prevent voters from having a chance to vote for their CANDIDATE.
As for being the same for 100 years, they used to have a “beauty pageant” election that at least gave the voters a chance to express who they wanted. Presumably the GOP insiders would take the voters’ preference into account (nice theory). That was canceled in August after it was clear Trump had a big lead.
They never did. It is called the caucus system which was put into law by the Colorado legislature. I didn't say I liked but there are a lot of ignorant people out there blaming Coloradans for following the law.