In 2013, Republicans were dead-set on killing Democrats’ plan for a statewide system to mail a ballot to the home of every registered voter. Opponents said it opened up the system to fraud, but the politics behind the bill was the belief mail ballots helped Democrats because they tended to have members who were more likely not to vote in most polling-place elections.

That’s why House Bill 1303 didn’t get a single Republican vote in the legislature that year before Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed it into law.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Election Day. The system is serving Republicans well. In a conference call Thursday GOP campaign consultants called it an asset.

Since 2013, Republicans replaced Democrat Mark Udall with Cory Gardner in the U.S. Senate, hold a one-seat majority in the state Senate, enjoy majorities in 60 percent of the state’s county commissions and elected a new University of Colorado regent, Heidi Ganahl, to an at-large post.

Ian Lindemann, the state director for the Republican National Committee, said the party strategists re-spun the narrative by combining the party’s traditionally strong short-game on get-out-the-vote efforts with a stronger long-term, data-driven operation over the 22 days when ballots are being mailed back in.

They use voter history data, for instance, to decide where to have workers on the ground on the day in which a voter usually returns a ballot to detect when someone might be forgetting to vote, so they can reach out. They combine that with staff that has roots in the community and legions of volunteers.

Lindemann said Republicans created an opportunity out of what some of them might initially have seen as a liability.

“It’s something we really choose to look at with a glass half-full mentality, and how can we organize in a superior fashion, how can we work within our community to turn out the right voters when we have a 22-day opportunity to look at people,” he said.

State GOP chairman Steve House said 92 percent of active Colorado GOP voters cast ballots this year. Nationally the number is 58 percent, he said.

“It has to have something to do with mail-in ballots,” he said.