In this election season, there is one area where Republicans need to be just like Democrats: getting out the vote. 

A big worry as early voting gets rolling around the country and Colorado ballots drop in a few weeks is a stunning number of Republicans, and specifically conservatives, are needlessly disarming themselves — through rejection of legal early voting methods or sitting on the sidelines.

Conservatives in Colorado and across the country are genuinely disheartened, discouraged and fearful about the prospect of further erosion in center-right representation in government — and in the deepening attacks on our bedrock values. The prospect of a Harris-Walz sequel to the shambolic Biden-Harris dumpster fire is bracing and should be motivating for conservatives to eagerly get ballots returned as early as possible.

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There have been important wins, no doubt, coming largely from well-crafted center-right ballot initiatives on fiscal policy and other issues that appeal across the political spectrum. Advance Colorado (which I advise) has been rewriting the blue-state blueprint for conservatives, most recently scoring a huge win at the recent special session to cut and cap property taxes.

Yet, GOP candidates continue to face headwinds. 

The reality is the conservative coalition has a dual challenge: disdain for early or mail-in voting and a disturbing percentage of core conservative voters who are unregistered or decline to vote.  

Though for decades, it’s been a joke that Democrats “vote early and often,” in recent years progressives have enacted a wide range of laws that encourage early voting, and particularly voting by mail. They passed them, and they use them, to bank their most likely votes.

In contrast, Republicans are working hard this year to unring the bell former President Donald Trump and others sounded over the years that these methods, particularly mail voting, are fraud-prone and are to be avoided. The most loyal Trump voters heeded this warning.  

Media interviews with older GOP voters in particular have shown they strongly prefer in-person voting on Election Day. Even dropping off their mail ballot at a drop box has caused agita. This of course is a challenge in a state such as Colorado where all-mail elections are the norm. 

Relying on grandma to get herself to one of the increasingly rare in-person polling locations around the country, while praying for congenial November weather, is no longer a strategy. 

The message this fall to the reluctant and the skeptical from right-leaning media is clear and aggressive: If you want to win, vote early by whatever means you have. Rather than complaining about the system, use it. 

But what about those who are choosing not to vote, or aren’t even registered?

Republicans in general, and Trump specifically, have a huge reservoir of support among self-described Christian evangelical voters and gun owners. If there were ever two groups whose core values are at risk in this year’s election, it’s these two.

The conventional wisdom is evangelical voters are automatons who march in lockstep, eagerly voting in droves for the rightward most candidate. 

In fact, tens of millions of self-described evangelicals aren’t registered to vote, or, if they are registered, don’t vote. Quick comparisons of exit polling data versus the overall estimated population of regular church-attending evangelicals show the number could surpass 40 million. 

And with current polling showing evangelical voters (of which I am one) are breaking 70% or more for Trump and the GOP, that’s a game-changing team of voters left on the bench.

It’s a sin. 

The same is true of gun owners (of which I am also one). Numbers put forth by national pro-Second Amendment groups estimate10 million pro-gun eligible voters don’t vote. This year they face the prospect of a president who said when she was a district attorney “just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean we aren’t going to enter that home and check to see if you are being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs.”

No Kamala word salad there — clear as a bell. 

Gun owners who don’t vote are playing Russian roulette with their freedom. 

It takes much more time to manage a fantasy football team or order dinner on DoorDash than it does to register and vote — with a lot more at stake. 

Do conservatives really want to do a big favor for Democrats and suppress their own vote? The November numbers will tell the tale. 

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.