1 ORCA SHMORCA. Everyone knew there was an election and who was on the ballot. If some people on our side decided not to show up it means they don't give a fuck. The other side won. The end.

2 Let. It. Burn. Including all the orcas.

3 So what you're saying is, we went into maybe the most important Presidential election of the last 30 years.... with a beta version GOTV, and lost to a guy who got less votes than McCain '08? Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit!

4

Morons, Where you involved in ORCA?

 

Please share your story. I'm really interested to find out how it worked(or didn't work) for everyone else.

5 I'm going to sleep this off. Please let me know if there's some other way we can screw up tonight.

6 >>>"From the very start there were warning signs." So, is that why, in post after post after post, people were encouraged (ahem) to take part in the debacle? What could be done at that point? The conference calls started two weeks before the election.

7 Always go with the most foolproof method that still gets the job done. Never go with version 1.0.

8 5 "From the very start there were warning signs."
So, is that why, in post after post after post, people were encouraged (ahem) to take part in the debacle?

Posted by: Gerry at November 08, 2012 03:40 PM (i8u8P)

So we should have... done what?

9 Ah, Republicans. They were a funny species.

10 You mean to tell me this was one gigantic FACEPALM?  Or perhaps a DOUBLE FACEPALM?

11 Another reason we should get our people to vote early.

12 Oh but Gerry loves to bitch and moan and complain.

Every damned thread.

13 oh jesus christ, this brings tears to my eyes.

14 all politics are local.  You can run out all of the technology in the world, but it is up to the local people to get their folks to the polls.

15 It was just an attempt to organize strike lists for election day.  It was only a small part of GOTV.   Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.....


worked fine at 503 Precinct.  I don't know what Romney did with the data we sent, but we figured it out and sent the info

16 Ben and John E already know all this but I'll share.

I had something similar happen with Lawyers for Romney. Long and short of it -- they didn't get me my precinct information until 8pm the night before. I had eight different precincts I had to spot-check and they waited 10 hours before I was supposed to be on-site. Eight. Fucking. PM. The. Night.Before.

Not only that -- I was supposed to have a partner that was also going to the same precincts. They gave me his name. That's it. No phone. No email. We had no way to contact one another.

As I told Ben and John, something weird went down. They were super organized leading up to election day. Hell, I initially got contacted back in May to help out. Something really melted down in the last 10-14 days before election day. I'm trying to determine who was in charge of that clusterfuck.

Good Christ....

17 Don't make a maniac out of me.  ALL THE GUYS GET CHAIRS!!!!

18 jesus, mary and joseph

19

I don't understand why they thought I might help.

20 But the most important question is--- did you remember your chair?

21 Well, at least no one accidentally deployed Mitt's cancer ray on a polling station and gave a precinct melanoma.

22 We had the latest technology in abacuses.

23 Did someone say Boston?  The GOP nominated a Massachusetts Republican and a bunch of people stayed home, as Gomer says: SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE

24 Reagan had Lee Atwater BushW had Rove Romney needed better people. I wonder how much this actually affected turnout. Is Romney's turnout still below McCains? Did Romney ever fight for military ballots to be properly issued, voter ID?

25 ALL THE GUYS GET CHAIRS!!!! Where's Sununu?!?

26 I took a break from four to five pm, expecting the precinct to be packed 5 - 7 pm


It wasn't; gave me a Very Bad Feeling.  Where were the 'crawl over broken glass' voters???

27 http://tinyurl.com/bo4ok4m Yeah nothing suspicious about the level of turnout in cities.

28 Yeah, I did it in Virginia.  They did send us the authorization we needed.  But overall it did not seem like a smart use of resources.  Web access was sporadic at our location, so those who were doing it on the phones/iPads were constantly having issues.  I was calling my names in which was a huge time suck.  And considering I live in a 70% dem precinct, I didn't see the point of reporting the name of every person who voted, rather than our likely voters.

29

oh. fuck. fuckity fuckity fuckstick. I sat on those calls (ultimately rejected b/c I couldn't be there at 5 in the am - ppl have kids, how does that work?) all those times, lstnd to the rah rah, and that's what they produced? glad i didn't have to drive into boston. someone should ask truman north what the command center was like, did they know there was a problem?

30 Just to repeat for importance what John said here ------>

So, the end result was that 30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. Like driving people to the polls, phone-banking, walking door-to-door, etc. We lost by fairly small margins in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. If this had worked could it have closed the gap? I sure hope not for my sanity's sake.

31 Time to move on. We have a lot of problems right in front of us.

32 I signed up, took the training, and tried to get into the final conference call at 8:30 pm Monday night.

Couldn't get through.  About 8:40 I got a call that auto connected me to the conference call, just in time to hear it wrap up.

I never received another email.  I finally went Tuesday pm to the Romney Victory/FAIL Center to make calls the rest of the afternoon.  Got to see Paul Ryan roll through if nothing else. 

Just saw a post on the facebooks from my lefty uncle in The Shire crowing about spending 7 hours pounding on doors Tuesday.  Low tech.  Works every fucking time.

As a IT developer myself, I'd say this was a world class clusterfuck.  That's a technical term, btw.

33 Posted by: Gerry at November 08, 2012 03:46 PM (i8u8P)

Bitch bitch bitch, moan moan moan.

Zero suggestions.

Not surprised.

34 We didn't do ORCA out here--it wasn't implemented yet here or something--so we did it the old-fashioned way.  Which also pretty much sucked.

Lots of new Tea Party people--for which I'm grateful--but they didn't know how to do strike lists and hadn't understood the explanations or something.  One precinct reported back with literally NO ONE struck.

35 Good Lord enough is enough! We lost.... Get over it! Sheesh...

36 So did you remember your chair?

37 the whole campaign was weaksauce

38 posted this in a dead thread:

I look to the future hoping the GOP sees three obstacles easily to be overcome.

1) Playing nice never works. The media will still be the paid-off refs. Reagan mocked liberals. Laughed at them to their faces. mocked their tired, old 1930's ideas that have failed time and time again. And he did it with a twinkle in his eye that made you want to laugh at them too. And when voters are laughing at them (The Daily Show understands this), you're not taking them seriously. Go negative on TV, radio, print mail, email, etc. Go mocking on the stump. The media will attack, but mock the media too. The people know they're in the tank, help them put 2+2 together. You basically box-out the Dems best weapon: Media Narrative.

2) Our GOTV effort was a hat and no cattle. Steal Obama's playbook (which combined Rove's micro-targeting strategery with the leftists' creepy "I am government and I know everything about you" stat gathering. The white vote isn't declining because white voters are disappearing. It's declining because they aren't motivated to vote like they used to be. The white voters of yesteryear would have voted no matter what. They're the greatest generation. Their sons, while still white, and center-right, don't have the same conviction. Mitt assumed you could Count On Them so he didn't target them. He was wrong.

3) Independents aren't just non-partisan because they don't vote for ideology. They are also non-partisan because they also don't vote AGAINST ideology. Moving to the middle is moving to the left. Run a conservative. A real one. A happy one. Win the base, win the turnout, and the middle will follow. The middle votes on performance, and "vibe" not on ideology. They don't have time for ideology and partisanship (the same thing to them). If Obama has destroyed America like we expect him to, the middle will come. If he hasn't we're not winning anyway.

39

Gerry, in hindsight I'm 100% sorry I suggested people sign up for ORCA. I'm sorry that I signed up for it.

But I didn't know it at the time and I only became worried about it a week before the election. By that time it was to late.  The Romney campaign told the RNC that it would take care of the poll watchers.

There really weren't any other options unless your local county committee set up an independent strikelist/poll watcher programs. Most didn't.

Not only did this fail epically, it prevented 30,000  of the most die hard volunteers from accomplishing anything on election day.

40 Well in light of the clusterfark of their mission critical ORCA operation, I shouldn't bitch about the fact that I never got my "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose" bracelets and "This Man Will Not Fail" bumper sticker.

41

So apparently Romney was rubbing two sticks together while Obama had a Zippo.  Good to know.

 

Incidentally, something ocurred to me in that NARWHAL post - who the FUCK actually reads any email sent to them by a political campaign???  That shit goes straight into the trash can.

42 Rachel: [while listening to Orca's sounds through a hydrophone] What is he saying? Captain Nolan: You're me, he says... I'm you, he says... you're my... drunk driver... he says...

43 Project ORCA is a massive undertaking--an all-too-predictable technocratic "results-oriented enterprise solution leveraging client-based data to positively impact voter buy-in and commitment." Could only have come from a Romney campaign, or, if you will, "a nationally-scalable management consulting platform to fully realize and leverage full-resource realization of electoral enterprise exploitation. Fully."

44 In the most GOP precinct in my city. Voted at 6AM. Got phone calls all day reminding me to vote. Got the last call at 6:59PM. The polls closed at 7PM. Clusterfuck.


Oh yeah, my sister voted 2 weeks before the election. She was still getting calls on election day.

Did I say clusterfuck?

45 So we're in the future now? Cool!

46

I wondered what was going on when I got a text message saying that the app was now working at 2:30-3:00 - I was using a normal cell phone to punch in numbers from the strike list and had no idea that the app was down. The system for keying in voters didn't seem to be working well either and the guy I talked to on the help-line couldn't verify that my info was actually getting through, so I just kept punching in info and prayed that it was getting through. We did have a bunch of young mothers with children show up in the last hour or so, one of which I know was a Romney voter, which I thought might be evidence of Orca working.

Overall, in NC it seems to have been coordinated better than other places- apart from the local Board of Elections failing to forward some paperwork during early voting and the legal hotline going down for a few days during the same period. Even here there was evidence of poor coordination and redundant training though.

It is hard not to feel lied to, given the hype. I spent 13 hours Tuesday typing in info at the polling station - at least I got a Republican governor and government out of it.

47

It seems like it has the possibility to be a good idea. It really needed to be tested before. Why uneducated terrorists understand the idea of dry runs and these guys didn't is beyond me.

Narwal was pretty genius. We need some of that.

This shit sounds dumb, but thats a point or two right here. Once you add in the systemic cheating, we're talking some real numbers.

48 I posted this in another thread but here is the summary:

I live in WI and volunteered for ORCA in early Oct.  Completed the training online.  Participated in the conference calls.  And never heard another word from them.  I emailed every day and called several times.  Nothing.

I checked on 6 precincts within 30 minutes of my house by asking friends who voted in them to look.  There were zero ORCA volunteers in any of them.  Zero.  In Wisconsin. 

49 John -- I'm a senior person at a consultancy who does Enterprise-grade web development as his bread and butter. This completely blows my mind. Utterly inexcusable. Don't know what to say. Thanks for the inside look. All the questions that we ask going into a project "How will we test?" "How many dry runs shall we do?" "How can we get this into the hands of power users ahead of time?" seem to have been completely ignored. Almost feels like a case of someone not knowing what they doing and utterly refusing to even acknowledge best practices as it would show everyone... that they didn't know what they were doing.

50  OMG. I read an article about some Romney campaign guy  while back and wondered if he knew what he was doing.  Geez Louise this sounds just so bad. No wonder it went haywire.

51 Gen Woolworth in the thread below asks how can Obama win coal country PA?!?!? Easy. Mitt Romney never drove home the point to those idiots that Obama hates coal. If Mitt Romney did his job, the coal industry workers would've been shitting their pants at the prospect of another 4 years of Obama.

52 So it would be accurate to say that team Romney was:

A STUTTERING CLUSTERFUCK OF A MISERABLE FAILURE!

53 It's called the stupid party for a reason. Don't respond on key issues or respond inadequately? Check Don't do your homework? Check Don't adequately prepare staff and volunteers? Check Don't actively combat fraud? Check Don't aggressively undermine MSM-generated marketing? Check Don't win? CHECK

54 As the coblogger who put the link to this POS in our sidebar, I offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies to all of you morons who signed up. I was supposed to be in the Boston HQ on the receiving end of this thing election day, but late last Friday night I got an email from them saying they were over-capacity. Glad I voted absentee and took the day off from work ...

55 I'm just going to keep reposting this on every thread until it sinks in. "Brad and GG have hit home runs here that the "conservatives" don't wish to here. The fact is that the Republican party has stupidly abandoned popular culture, media, etc. (and the "but they don't like us" line is the whine of a sniveling coward) Engage the populace. Late night TV. Various web channels. Make appearances. Yuk it up w/ the hosts. Be of good cheer. Get out, shake hands (which Mitt finally did at 3 weeks out). Trust me when I say that if you're sitting across the desk from someone, they won't insult you for long, but if you run away, whining that "it's not fair, well, you're a target. And won't get many votes..." ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This right here is one of the only sensible things that has been said at the HQ in the past 2 days. Abide it or fail for life.

56 who the FUCK actually reads any emailsent to them by a political campaign???

I admit to scanning the ones from "Paul Ryan" for photos.

Heh heh.

57 This was an instruction packet that went out to 30,000+ people. Did no one proof-read it? @@@@@@@ "Print is dead. No need for editors." -every K-MBA executive tool in the world, 'cuz Wired and Forbes said so, and 'cuz websites and PDFs need no editing

58 Yep.  I was signed up as an OCRA volunteer and I got a sick feeling in the first phone call when I was told, "We definitely want only the best and most qualified volunteers for this" and suspected I would be asked to invest in a time share by the time the call was through.

When my "packet" didn't arrive, I was told to call the local Elections Board, whereupon I was informed that I did not have my credentials because my "birthdate couldn't be verified" and also that I wasn't signed up under the Romney campaign, but under the name of a local judge or Congressional candidate or something. 

WTF.

59 At my poll at 0545. Took a bit to figure out it was https. Finally connected and for 12 fucking hours I was checking off names, for what purpose. The Obama point that was there asked what I was doing; I explained it and he was shocked and a bit concerned that we would be able to connect directly to Boston. Well I guess he shouldn't have been. Really, what was the point.

60 This thread isn't about me.

61 everyone got chairs, BTW.


My credentials were mailed to me a few days after I emailed Big Dan C. --although three of us were assigned to Connie Mack XXVIII rather than Romney, and you can only have one watcher per candidate.

62 I signed up for Orca and frankly got very little back from them. I sent emails, I called. I got email from them for different things, but nothing that would actually help me. I was very excited monday night when a meeting was called for 8.30 and that questions would be taken. At the end of the rah rah, they hung up. Very poorly handled.

63 I wasn't that person.

You come into here day in day out demanding refunds for AOSHQ.

You can GTFO.

64 Why'd they even try to change things after 2010? If it ain't broke.

65 Absolutely serious non-snark question: How can a party consistently front *ideas*, especially economic ones, that are proven to work, and consistently fuck up the process part? I mean, you would *think* that the whole "choose ideas because they have a history of success" thing would bleed over into the campaign at some point.

66 Andy, it's not like Mitt Romney had, oh, six years to prepare.

67

Posted by: mr.frakypants at November 08, 2012 03:51 PM (2B4de)

___

Maybe the ORCA admins were donk plants

68 After I completed all of the ORCA training, I took a PTO day off of work, signed on for most of the calls including the final one Monday night... ...and never heard a word from them. Nothing ever about any packet, or web app, nothing about where to go even though I asked multiple times, just nothing. I sent them a f-u email Monday night, saying "if you had too many volunteers, don't be dicks, just tell us." Now it's obvious the problems were far more widespread than I assumed.

69 Breaking:

Romney forgot to rub his lucky rabbit's foot night before election.

70  I took a break from four to five pm, expecting the precinct to be packed 5 - 7 pm

It wasn't; gave me a Very Bad Feeling. Where were the 'crawl over broken glass' voters???

Posted by: Jerry Jack in Jacksonville at November 08, 2012

The timing of the voting was weird this year.  I worked a predominantly D precinct, which had overall turnout of 77%.  Very heavy voting the first few hours, moderate from about 9-5 (with no uptick during lunch).  It picked up a little at 5, but not much.  And hardly anybody voted between 6:30 and 7.  I think I read somewhere that Republicans typically turn out later in the day.  If that's so ...

71 Did I mention that at 5:40am OFA had their person there, with a chair, with a huge sign to answer questions about provisional ballots. When the poll didn't open at 6am on the dot, the OFA person was calling at 6:01am, and actually talking to a live person.

72 "a nationally-scalable management consulting platform to fully realize and leverage full-resource realization of electoral enterprise exploitation. Fully." Maybe we could have won this if we said we were electing a chairman for the Olympics Committee.

73 I am still floored that so-called republicans could vote for a muslim over a Morman. The republican party is dead to me. This was a seminal event in American polotis and the republican party couldn't even be bothered to fake it like a cheap hooker.

74 What ever happened Romney lost votes in key States and got fewer than idiot McCain.  Of course as someone said earlier, Palin may have had something to do with that.


I know I seriously considered not voting in 2008 until Palin got on the ticket.

75

I sense a bit of black humor is about to appear on this thread.

76 As shitty as this is, it actually makes me feel better.

Because I'd much rather think we lost this one because of bureaucratic fuckups on the part of the Romney campaign in failing to get out the vote, as opposed to demographic shift to the left,.

The former is fixable, and no doubt WILL be fixed well by whomever is the next GOP candidate.  The latter. . .that's a perpetual problem.

77 "So did you remember your chair?"

This, perhaps, was the bitterest irony of all.

78 #69- that's exactly what happened to me.

79 I am still floored that so-called republicans could vote for a muslim over a Morman.


You got a link?

80 I'm like a broken record, but it shouldn't have mattered. Not this time in this election. Not with this guy. We should have been able to run a damn martian and won. People shouldn't have needed to have been told to, you know, vote. Country is lost not because of poor GOTV efforts, but because the electorate is stupid as fuck.

81 I see there's a timewarp again. I will continue to be bitchy about the ORCA or die shit because there was only one person (fluffy) who actually took two seconds to say what it was. When you cannot get your shit together enough to explain what it is to a group of people who are in your prime volunteer pool, you are failing from the beginning.

82

Posted by: Blue Falcon in Boston at November 08, 2012 03:46 PM (KCvsd)

 

Uh..... wow.....

83 I wonder what Hector thinks about this.

84 I joined every conference call, kept being told that the packet was on the way, and then never received anything. I even woke up at 5:30 on election day in case something arrived in the wee hours of the night.  But no, nothing. I went to my polling place to vote, and there were a couple of people there with blank sheets of paper, writing down the names of people who voted. Not even proper strike lists. The good news is, both of them were like this, so maybe Loudoun County just had issues. But the point is, they never told me what was going on, or let me know they already had someone assigned to every precinct in my area, and ask if I could help out another way.  Just totally, completely, utterly disorganized. As much as Mitt put a polished face on the campaign, I think underneath it was all a bubbling mess.

85 What ever happened Romney lost votes in key States and got fewer than idiot McCain. Of course as someone said earlier, Palin may have had something to do with that. I know I seriously considered not voting in 2008 until Palin got on the ticket. ----- But some of these states, particularly Ohio, are losing population at a rapid rate.

86 @ 83

"Because I'd much rather think we lost this one because of bureaucratic fuckups on the part of the Romney campaign in failing to get out the vote, as opposed to demographic shift to the left,."

You have tens of millions of votes to try and blame on bureaucratic fuckups then. Good luck.

87

laceyunderalls:

@

I did the Lawyers for Romney thing as well. In my area, it actually worked reasonable well. The guy who headed up the program in my state did a great training program. We had the precinct lists a week before the election. We had several conference calls and I had good communication with the headquarters.

However, we had a god awful time touching base with our Poll Observers as half of them did not show up. Let me be clear, they were not barred from the site, they were not turned away, they were not unassigned, THEY JUST DID NOT SHOW UP.

88 >>>>>I wonder how much this actually affected turnout. Is Romney's turnout still below McCains?

Did Romney ever fight for military ballots to be properly issued, voter ID?

Posted by: joeindc44 says choom on fuckers at November 08, 2012 03:46 PM (QxSug)

Not only is Mitt's under McCain's, but so is fucking Barry's by nearly 2 Mil.  Wrap your head around that one.

89 I am still floored that so-called republicans could vote for a muslim over a Morman. It would be funnier to say the Moor over the Mormon.

90 That Romney organization is headed by a real leader, a turnaround artist, who knows how to get things done. Don't any of you dare say otherwise.

91 Oh, We had very low turnout on Election day, but that didn't worry me because over half the registered voters had voted early. Romney won my precinct's election-day returns ~290 to 250, Btw.

92

So  the   Romney   campaign   was  an  even  bigger  clusterfuck   than  McCain   campaign.   Awesome.  

 

 

93

WELL, this needs to be changed immediately.  And I plan to do something about it.

First, constant outreach over the next two years in high R propensity voting blocks, i.e., regular church goers and nursing homes.

Second, a system THAT FUCKING WORKS in place and BANK EACH AND EVERY FUCKING VOTE IN EARLY VOTING STATES, period.

How has this not been done already.  Are we run by a party of fucking idiots.

Third, how do you get in touch with grass roots organizers/volunteers who work as poll watchers, etc.  Is there such a list?

94 Private sector experience! Turn-around artist! Professional executive! Yaaayyyy!

95 Maybe the ORCA admins were donk plants

Posted by: kallisto at November 08, 2012 03:54 PM (jm/9g)

Please be sure to complete the user satisfaction survey that you will be receiving via email in the next few days.

96 "The bitter irony of this entire endeavor was that a supposedly small government candidate gutted the local structure of GOTV efforts in favor of a centralized, faceless organization in a far off place (in this case, their Boston headquarters). Wrap your head around that." You mean the guy who championed nationalized healthcare and practical socialism in his only political endeavor? Romney is what he is. A gray corporate head who likes all things centralized.

97 No one contacted me the whole campaign what so ever

98 **Easy. Mitt Romney never drove home the point to those idiots that Obama hates coal. ** again, a wedge. shithead lefties hate coal. But potential romney democrats loves them some coal.

99 @ 87

Yes

100 57
Gen Woolworth in the thread below asks how can Obama win coal country PA?!?!?

Easy.

Mitt Romney never drove home the point to those idiots that Obama hates coal.

If Mitt Romney did his job, the coal industry workers would've been shitting their pants at the prospect of another 4 years of Obama.

Posted by: Soothsayer at November 08, 2012 03:51 PM (jUytm)

In 2004, Kerry carried coal country in Virginia 60-40. In 08, Obama carried coal country in Virginia 55-45. In 2012, Romney won coal country in Virginia 70-30. His message rang out here.

101 I think you've sufficiently flogged this one to death. we get it, bad execution which added to the frustration of losing the election. was this decisive in any way? of course not.

102 mr.frakypants, I thought it was either incompetence or a standard under-tested rush job. Someone else suggested that it could have been a snake oil sale. It's certainly a possibility.

103 57 Gen Woolworthinthe thread belowasks how can Obama win coal country PA?!?!? Easy. Mitt Romney never drove home the point to those idiots that Obama hates coal. If teh JEF'S OWN WORDS from HIW OWN MOUTH in 2008 didn't do it, nothing anyone else could say would. Well, I won't shed a tear this winter when they are out of work & freezing their asses off. Elections have consequences.

104 It would be funnier to say the Moor over the Mormon.

Posted by: toby928© for TB at November 08, 2012 03:57 PM (evdj2)

The Bore-man who can't say Corpsman over the Mormon?

Apologies to Emily Hartley.

105 Signed up, never heard back from them.

106 19 Don't make a maniac out of me. ALL THE GUYS GET CHAIRS!!!!
Posted by: Paul Anka at November 08, 2012 03:45 PM (QKKT0)

Teh funny.

107 From Weasel Zipper: Philly Polling Stations Where GOP Inspectors Were Kicked Out Had 90% Voter Turnout, 99% Voted For ObamaÂ… Nothing suspicious about those numbers. Or circumstances. In a banana republic, that is.

108

Exceller,

We lost by a total of 366k votes in four states.  Yes, I'd say these failures were very very decisive.

109 This project could have been pristine and still failed, because the candidate was not a conservative / did not push a conservative message


That should sink in:  Not.  A.  Conservative.

110 Romney won coal country in Virginia 70-30. And we still lost VA?

111 My husband and I voted Oct. 18th, the first day of early voting in NC, and we got phone calls every day including Election Day. One day we got 9 or 10 calls. Seems like resources were allocated poorly.

112 the electorate is stupid as fuck. Posted by: Rich at November 08, 2012 03:55 PM (arczc) eleventy! Plus, as Moron Natasha put it, there are now more pigs at the trough than are farmers to feed them.

113 Romney got fewer votes than McCain, yes.

But Obama also got fewer votes than Obama.

114 You mean the guy who championed nationalized healthcare and practical socialism in his only political endeavor? sssshh, quiet, "be nice" is the rule now that, and "some animals are more equal than others"

115 I was lucky - even without credentials, I waited so patiently (it was a *real* clusterfuck down here in FL, folks) that the harried poll clerk finally just said "screw it, let me show you where you can observe from" after 45 minutes of waiting for him to call downtown to look for my credentials (which ironically, as it turned out, I never had since I somehow wasn't one of the folks selected down here in FL). So, there I was - laptop, internet hotspot, DSLR, snacks, and dumbphone - all ready to participate in the great big R&R win. In what was probably a serious violation of countless state and Federal election laws, I was literally online for several hours trolling *inside* the polling place. Voters were talking on their phones, and I guess I looked official, so nobody ever said anything. I had zero desire to do anything illegal, but it was nice to see all those glowing reports of turnout numbers from Breitbart and others during the day...it really helped my buzz...I was quite distraught because I knew I was *never* going to be able to fulfill my commitments to ORCA. Of course, then I noticed that there were six people with "books" (A-E, F-H, etc.)-that I was supposed to observe and check names off (which never was going to happen). I was in Miami Gardens, so of course there never were any "slack times"...I might have taken advantage of the opportunity between 4:02 and 4:07 when there was a small break in voting, but once the "on the way from home" folks started showing and slammed the precinct yet again, I bailed. I mean, I was reading the reports real-time from Fox and Breitbart, this sucker was *in* *the* *bag*...I *had* to get home in time to see Beckel's head explode on The Five, you know. This polling location, like most, would have required probably seven or eight volunteers to fully staff. Luckily, when I got home, I checked other e-mail addresses, and finally located the e-mail that told me I didn't have credentials. That would potentially have been a major bummer had I known (lol)...although like I said, a little bit of polite persistence meant I had access to this particular precinct without issue. The hardest part of the day - not using all of the glorious information delivered to me personally by the Internet in gloating to the OFA volunteer sitting next to me about how bad his guy was going to get killed. Man, I'm glad I kept my mouth shut.

116 No one contacted me the whole campaign what so ever

Posted by: Nevergiveup at November 08, 2012 03:58 PM (79ueO)

Me neither, but neither one of us are in a swing State.  You are in a guaranteed blue State and I am in a guaranteed red State.

117 So if we only had better software we would have won? Please. Bush won twice and nobody had ORCA. If so-called Republicans can't get off their ass to vote against the worst president in history than no amount of technical bullshit is going to make the difference.

118 Did Romney ever fight for military ballots to be properly issued, voter ID? Posted by: joeindc44 says choom on fuckers at November 08, 2012 03:46 PM (QxSug) Yeah, those should be on my list of self-screws, though the VID thing was partly because of Holder and the left, so not as *much* of a self-screw.

119 That should sink in: Not. A. Conservative. Running against a Marxist. Let that sink in. It should have been a walk.

120 84 "So did you remember your chair?"

This, perhaps, was the bitterest irony of all.

Posted by: Clint Eastwood at November 08, 2012 03:55 PM (lgXUp)

 

That. Is the funniest shit I have seen in some time.

121 Philly Polling Stations Where GOP Inspectors Were Kicked Out Had 90% Voter Turnout, 99% Voted For ObamaÂ… ------- Now do those numbers seem remotely possible? Anyone? ANYONE?!?!? But hey, let's pretend massive fraud didn't occur.

122

Posted by: mr.frakypants at November 08, 2012 03:51 PM (2B4de)

 

Someone really needs to look into who designed this thing... what company...

 

And who THEY supported... a quick perusal of Campaign contributions may be enlightening.

123 Coal Country Virginia has few actual people. Empty Country. If only cows could vote.

124 Romney won coal country in Virginia 70-30.

And we still lost VA?

Posted by: Soothsayer at November 08, 2012 04:00 PM (jUytm)

Sequestration will take care of that.  That it is Oshitforbrains doesn't just replace all the military bureaucrats with socialist bureaucrats.

125 If it's any consolation -- GOTV for Republicans has always been a cluster... I tried to tell people that. It has always been a myth. You could see it falling apart here. Various commenters would say--what they were finding. It's been like that for awhile. And--there is only so much you can do to GOTV--especially with voters of an independent ideology and mind set. Republicans have won before because the voter was self motivated.

126 We lost by a total of 366k votes in four states. That explains the stymied look on Mitt's face while he conceded. He really expected to win. I'm convinced of it.

127

Posted by: Rich at November 08, 2012 04:02 PM (arczc)

__

It explains the inflated turnout on the part of African-Americans anyway. I have a  feeling Philadelphia was not the only city where this occurred.

128 Coal Country Virginia has few actual people. Empty Country. If only cows could vote.

Hey, a new constituency that needs enfranchising!

129 You have tens of millions of votes to try and blame on bureaucratic fuckups then. Good luck. Yep, tens of millions didn't stay away because THIS year they weren't called up on Election Day and reminded to go to the polls. "Hello? Oh, is that today? Ok."

130 Well, so much for Romneys vaunted organizational prowess.

131 What Republican voters don't seen to understand yet is that *we* have infiltrated them. It is not a tough concept to comprehend.

132 Coal Country Virginia has few actual people. heh, apparently

133 Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in a race that has had lower turnout than any race in the last 8 years, Philadelphia turned out at 90%. Right.

134

I also signed up for ORCA. The first time I signed up I never heard back. So I signed up again. This time I got an email saying it would take a couple days to process me into their system. After that I was asked to particiapte in the above mentioned "training call" which wasn't really training. Then I was told I'd get a packet. I never got it. When the morning of election day rolled around and I didn't have a packet, I just decided to call an audible and went to the Fairfax County GOP Headquarters and asked for some walk lists. I ended up knocking on close to 150 doors which in the end didn't do any good but was probably more effective than the ORCA deal.

Oh well. Live and learn. I think in the future we gotta just go old school like Jesse Ventura when he ran for governor. Instead of trying to divide up the electorate by likely voters based on consumer habits and voter history, we should just knock on ever damn registered voter's door and ask for their vote. Grassroots, bottum up campaigning. Go into every neighborhood and ask for their vote. We've given up totally on vast segments of the population becase we assume they'll never vote our way. In truth they don't vote our way because we don't bother to stop by and ask for their vote.

That is all, Morons. Carry on.

135

Would a better run operation have made a difference -- I'd like to think so. Because it is a fixable thing.

@

I agree with the early commenter who noted the difficulty of having a large centralized operation try to coordinate this across thousands of precincts, each with different voting laws and rules, over a huge country.

136 Over at Yahoo! (I know, weird that anyone would go there), they have articles up on why Social Security is going under and that pensions are $5 trillion short.  Awfully nice that they didn't do that four days ago. That pension one has a $2,250 tax increase per household to balance pensions in NY, where I am, and I'm 28, so no need to explain how fucked I am on Social Security.

I would love to just find a farm in Canada or something and just grow enough to survive on without making any money so that I don't have to fork any over to these mobsters anymore.

137 Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a malignant traitor.

138 Juji Pill, I said "supposedly".

139

Posted by: Soothsayer at November 08, 2012 04:03 PM (jUytm)

__

He said as much earlier in the day. Told a reporter: "I expect a solid win."

 

Meanwhile, preznit was already thanking his campaign workers for a job well done "no matter what happens tonight".

 

Bizzarro.

 

140

>>I think you've sufficiently flogged this one to death. we get it, bad execution which added to the frustration of losing the election. was this decisive in any way? of course not.

 

Yes. It was. We lost VA, OH, CO and FL by a combined total of 375,000 votes. An effective GOTV effort may have turned this election to Romney.

 

So yes, it was consequential.

141 I often could not contribute to the Romney campaign from 3 different computers with different OSs. Their Donation shopping cart page malfunctioned due to poor design and programming, informing me in database speak that several fields were empty when they were not. I wrote them and told them to fire the webmaster as he was derelict in his or her duty. This went on for 3 months. I wonder how much money they lost as a result. One guy called me from the Romney campaign in Boston and told me they were aware of the problem but that I could contribute by phone. Huh? Why not just get the problem fixed?

142 Guys. Guess who won.

143 @ 116

"We lost by a total of 366k votes in four states. Yes, I'd say these failures were very very decisive."

Even if decisive, the main takeaway should be that the election was close when it should not have been. So in 2016 do you want to count on having a better GOTV effort carrying the day? How much more do you think the adolescent electorate will have shifted by then? It will be worse, not better.

People are not getting smarter, they're getting more dependent. And worse economic times will breed more dependency, until it all comes down. Maybe before then.

144 Floridian here. I did get a call around 3 or 4 pm reminding me to vote. I don't remember who it was from but I'm pretty sure it wasn't from the Romney campaign. It sounded like a 3rd party thing.

145 ORCA had to be scrapped  in PA - no electronic devices or cameras permitted in polling places.

I made phone calls on election day and was grateful for  the paper list I was calling from,  the striker used florescent pink highlighter. 

On election day, worked from a  Cong.campaign headquarters not a Victory Center and they were very organized and had their certificates ready for striker/watchers by Sat. AM.   

146 FWIW I never received a GOTV call. Denver suburbs. Big time CO battleground. Turns out we re-elected the only Dem in CO's congressional delegation. Oh, and we went for legal weed in a big way.

I hate my generation.

147 O/T Good News! The Blaze is reporting ALlen West has taken the lead in his recount! Let's hope it holds

148

Yep, tens of millions didn't stay away because THIS year they weren't called up on Election Day and reminded to go to the polls. "Hello? Oh, is that today? Ok."

 

So what's your point here? Next time around, you want to say 'Fuck GOTV' and just run a couple extra ads instead?

149 60 It's called the stupid party for a reason.

Posted by: Merovign, Dark Lord of the Sith at November 08, 2012 03:52 PM (bxiXv)

Right. Additionally, I would add naive. As in, it's "naive" to think that appealing to traditional American values is gonna cut it, considering the electorate. Or "love of country", rather than "revenge". The revenge voters won. America is not what it was, we need to deal with it.

The revenge voters need to suffer greatly in order to have a come to Jesus moment. Our job is to do all we can not to suffer along with them.

150 We need to give people free shit to show up to vote. That's how you GOTV.

151 O/T  Drudge reporting via the Washington Examiner that Big Sis may replace the Chinless Wonder (Holder).

152 holly cow ! that is mind blowing.  zero had the google and facebook guys working on his tech stuff , and we had this ?!

153 The O has begun his assault on the 2nd Amendment... The Night of the Long Knives has begun...let the bodies hit the floor... one can cite whatever over and over about the failure of tech advances by GOP, Mitt miscomings but it boiled down to conservative, independents not giving a rats ass deep enough to go out and vote, allowing the Obota minions to steal the election...what I want to know is how all of the polling data was so way off..feel like I have been to a used car salesmen and sold a lemon after hearing the pretty words...

154

Soothsayer, I agree 1000000%.

fuck this.  We need to take control of grass roots efforts at the grass roots.  NEVER AGAIN...........

155 I mentioned this earlier, but I participated in ORCA and had no issues. I received regular correspondence from them, and my packet was sent well in advance of election day. They told me I would need an authorization form to be a poll watcher, and on Monday told me to pick it up at my local GOP office (which I did). The voter list was comprehensive, I didn't notice any crashing of the system, and Boston even checked in at one point to ask how things were going.

So, it's odd to hear about others having these issues, because it seemed to work fine for me.

156 . . .Another problem: “Voter turnout in Philadelphia was around 60 percent, according to state election figures.” In these precincts it was well over 90%. Same article. Someone should ask Holder if he has opened an investigation. I love Casablanca.

157 Whoever put Paul Bremer in charge of this effort?
(ducks)

158 The big difference for the Romney campaign this time is-- with all the "technological improvements" they might have more effectively, and efficiently spread the "we don't need you", and "we are disorganized" message to a vastly greater number of people. Have any of you volunteered before? Florida was a cluster----in 2000. Nevada was a cluster----in 2004. At least that was my experience.

159 The county I live in (which is a mostly rural one in VA) had a committee meeting a week or two before the election. In it the poll watchers (strike list people) were told that they were to write the names of the voters down as they were called out and got their ballots. At the time I wondered how this would jive with the supposed electronic stuff they were doing in Boston, but I just figured since we were a small county they were doing it this way for a good reason. The chairwoman was quick to point out that each poll watcher would need a certificate from her, she pointed this out multiple times. I guess the people who signed up online were not told to contact the county committees. Sounds like this was a huge clusterfuck.

160 ORCA:  The proverbial whale-oiled machine.

161 You know, the only thing about Gordon's Vodka is it makes you smell like a giant turd. My wife finds this troubling, but my collie thinks it's kind of sexy. BTW--what happens when it turns 4:36 again? Start over?

162 I think the old saying is true - if the candidate can't even run an organized campaign, then he sure as Hell doesn't deserve the chance to run the country. 

163

Oh, and we went for legal weed in a big way.

I hate my generation.

 

Obama is promising to crack down on it. GOP could make up some new ground with younger voters if they stopped trying to lock people in cages because they disapprove of their use of satanic vegetables.

164 I was involved with the Colorado legal hotline, and everything in this post about Project ORCA is spot on. It was a complete disaster. It also distracted our pollwatchers from actually paying attention to what was going on around them.

165 Here in heavily Republican Idaho, the Dems called my wife to remind her to vote. The DEMS! She's never voted Dem in her life.

166 Tens of millions stayed away for one reason. They don't give a fuck about their country. We exist an an echo chamber of seriously concerned like minded people who most assurradly give a fuck. That ain't Joe Shitforbrains, who lives with his thumb up his ass when it can find room beside his head.

167 ... but did you bring your chair?

168

"Hey Mr. Orca, are the packets on their way?"

 

"No, sorry Boss. Im still licking stamps!"

169 157 I mentioned this earlier, but I participated in ORCA and had no issues. I received regular correspondence from them, and my packet was sent well in advance of election day. They told me I would need an authorization form to be a poll watcher, and on Monday told me to pick it up at my local GOP office (which I did). The voter list was comprehensive, I didn't notice any crashing of the system, and Boston even checked in at one point to ask how things were going. So, it's odd to hear about others having these issues, because it seemed to work fine for me. Posted by: Chris at November 08, 2012 04:06 PM (gI9Bk) ________________ Chris where were you?

170 Remember how sure we were that the Court would at least strike down the mandate, if not more? And then BOOM disappoint and shock everywhere! That is exactly how Tuesday night felt.

171 Are the democratic poll workers and gotv personnel paid? They are union guys, right?

172 >>Oh, and we went for legal weed in a big way. Well, That could explain why there was higher than usual dem turnout in CO at least.

173 **Not only is Mitt's under McCain's, but so is fucking Barry's by nearly 2 Mil. Wrap your head around that one.** aren't there still millions of outstanding ballots to be counted? Again, the loss of the senate seats was the truly vicious blow. I don't know how to even address that.

174

123 -- yea -- the 90% turnout number is a might tough to believe.  The 99% number in favor of Obama -- that I can believe.

 

127 -- you are probably right.  Look, better Republican GOTV may make a difference around the edges, but Democrats are probably always likely to be better about it. 

175 So what's your point here? Next time around, you want to say 'Fuck GOTV' and just run a couple extra ads instead? ----- No, of course not. The point, I think, is that in this specific election the electorate should have been able to see the man for the Marxist he is and should have been self-motivating. The fact that it wasn't tells us something far more worrisome than a filed GOTV effort by the GOP.

176 Surprise surprise... Team Obama did their dirty trick by infiltrating the opponents GOTV... probably wasn't too tough with HQ in ultraliberal Boston

177

Obamacare is a  massive undertaking –  a   new, unprecedented and   technologically advanced plan too.

 

Big fuckin' deal.

178 My polling station in Northern VA was 2-1 Obama. about 800 Obama, 400 Romney, less than 30 sprinkled among the minor parties.

179 I had a similar experience there in the war room in Boston. Over promised, underdelivered, to the volunteers and to the GOTV. When the software broke down, they told us to use our personal email and fostering things by hand over the phone. Which would be great but there weren't enough phones. It was a nightmare.

180 Seriously?  Seriously?

GOP, you have probably thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of IT professionals who do this for a much more demanding customer set than the government- from banks to (my current client) energy sector companies to people who even just run their own blogs.  Any 5 of us could have done this better.

First, I don't have a problem with a javascript web-page designed to be accessible on any internet enabled device (laptops, phones, tablets, whatever).  In fact, that sounds like one thing they did right- no reason to right potentially 5 different versions of the UI, and all the crunching can be done server-side.

That said, the rest of that is completely unacceptable.  My company would get fired in a heart-beat if we tried to deliver a product in that fashion.

GOP, please, you have lots of tech savvy resources.  Please use them.

181 119 My husband and I voted Oct. 18th, the first day of early voting in NC, and we got phone calls every day including Election Day. One day we got 9 or 10 calls. Seems like resources were allocated poorly.

Posted by: NCKate at November 08, 2012 04:00 PM (MsQkt)

 

My house got a crap-load of calls too - 4-5 a day for weeks on end. I just assumed they were calling to encourage my sister to vote, since she is registered Republican and hasn't voted here in the last couple elections (because she has been married and living in Kansas for eight years....).

182

Explaining VA is very simple - DC.  DC is growing like crazy (ugh) and all sorts of leftist shitheads are moving in to get on the gravy train.  They're not going to live in the District proper among all those dangerous minorities, and taxes are higher in Maryland, so they flock to northern VA.  Simple as that.

183

hannity's.

We need both.  I mean, let's be honest here, who gives a fuck if we help some lazy voter get going and get to the fucking polls.

There should be NO ONE left on those rolls as high propensity voters, they should be contacted before election day with the words, can we "count on you to vote" on election day.

The rolls should be checked to make sure that they voted.  AND IF NOT, THEN WE SHOULD BE THERE IN A FUCKING VAN TO HOLD THEM TO THEIR PROMISE.

That is what is needed, pure and simple.  There is a month to fucking early vote in Ohio.  That's a month where we need to confirm or bank millions of early votes.  Pure and simple.

184 hey nobody told me Penelope Cruz was in some pirate movie

185 In addition, Colorado election law bans all electronic devices from polling sites, so basically people couldn't enter data into ORCA without stepping 100 feet outside the polling side. What a goddamn failure.

186 The OWN is no such thing!!!  We are a huge success!!! 

187 Now do those numbers seem remotely possible? Anyone? ANYONE?!?!? But hey, let's pretend massive fraud didn't occur. Posted by: Rich at November 08, 2012 04:02 PM (arczc) For no adequately explored reason, the RNC/GOP has ceded not only inner cities, but vote fraud as well. Occasionally I get an exasperated "What do you expect us to do?" I follow that with "Fucking challenge it, demand recounts even if you know it's not close, follow up on eyewitness testimony, follow up on people who *did* get caught to make sure they're prosecuted, encourage whistleblowers, and most of all PUBLICIZE IT because just like Benghazi and Fast and Furious, the majority of people have no damned idea what's going on!" If anyone does any of that on a large scale at this point, I will probably be so surprised I will have a stroke.

188 GOP could make up some new ground with younger voters if they stopped trying to lock people in cages because they disapprove of their use of satanic vegetables. I concur 100%, ol chum. We could've easily won run the table if we gave lip service to legalizing pot AND buggin out of Afghanistan. Radical, I know. But smart politics. Plus, you know, saving lives.

189

Truman, could you e-mail me your story to benaoshq at gmail.com?

 

Were you at Boston Garden?

190 yes yes, coal country is nice but what about the rest of the country, eh? can't abandon the cities.

191 86 Vic, for a republican to NOT vote for a Morman, i.e., not turning out, it was a gimmie for the muzzie in chief. If the republicans would have turned out & voted for Romney, we'd have a new president. So, no vote for the Morman is tacit approval of the muzzie in my book.

192 That said, the rest of that is completely unacceptable. My company would get fired in a heart-beat if we tried to deliver a product in that fashion.

I'd get people killed if I delivered a product like that, so let me add my professional disapproval.

193 John and Ben, we should probably talk at some point. I do this sort of thing for a living, and it was executed exactly like it should have been by a consultant group...if there was no money on the line. It was a terrible insult to the people that volunteered their time. This was the first campaign that I volunteered for, but will never do so again. A complete and total failure.

194 #165
Legal weed vs illegal?

IMO, might as well have legal, and keep the money here, instead of sending it to Mexican cartels.   Really, if adults want to smoke weed at home, let them. 

If his last term is any indication, Obama will wait until he's in political trouble again, before starting the real crackdown in CO as a distraction. 

195 As shitty as this is, it actually makes me feel better.

Because I'd much rather think we lost this one because of bureaucratic fuckups on the part of the Romney campaign in failing to get out the vote, as opposed to demographic shift to the left,.

The former is fixable, and no doubt WILL be fixed well by whomever is the next GOP candidate. The latter. . .that's a perpetual problem.

Posted by: looking closely at November 08, 2012 03:54 PM (PwGfd)

It would make me feel better too if I didn't think the GOP would go right back out in 2016 and nominate exactly the same sort of candidate again. But, it's the GOP, so they will. Romney might be a sharp guy, but seems like a lot of the folks working for him, well, not so sharp.

196 Romney lost VA by about 110,00 votes. How many Military Ballots did not get counted?

197 Project ORCA

198 Running against a Marxist. Let that sink in.

It should have been a walk.

Posted by: toby928© for TB at November 08, 2012 04:01 PM (evdj2)

Ask a hundred Americans if they think Obama is a "marxist".  See how many "yes" answers you get---compared to the Funny Faces and rolling eyes

But yes, a ham sandwich should have walloped Obama.  A conservative ham sandwich....

199 I am a great admirer of Kristallacht. I think once we replace Holder we'll have one too. Never waste a good crisis, and if one isn't handy create one.

200 If marine mammals are so damn smart, who'd they fuck this up?

201 Rich nailed it back at 82, or in that vicinity if we're busting trolls: >>Country is lost not because of poor GOTV efforts, but because the electorate is stupid as fuck. To which I would add "because the media was in the bag," cf., Iranian attacks on our drones on Nov. 1. Imagine, for a moment, if that news had come out. I am Jakeman's eternal look of surprise.

202 #185

Romney screwup aside, this was probably the last time I'm going to vote on actual election day.  If I can vote early, I'm doing so from now on.

203

Posted by: Meiczyslaw at November 08, 2012 04:11 PM (4+LTj)

 

Like I said earlier.... we need to find out which company supposedly built this thing.... and do a little investigation.

204 Chris where were you?

Posted by: tasker at November 08, 2012 04:08 PM (r2PLg)

Western VA. A very red precinct. I checked later, and Romney got more votes there than McCain did in '08, so at least where I was they did get turn out up. Too bad it was a clusterfark everywhere else.

205 we should just knock on ever damn registered voter's door and ask for their vote. Grassroots, bottum up campaigning. Go into every neighborhood and ask for their vote. We've given up totally on vast segments of the population becase we assume they'll never vote our way. In truth they don't vote our way because we don't bother to stop by and ask for their vote. That is all, Morons. Carry on. Posted by: DC Zombie at November 08, 2012 04:04 PM (b96e6) ___________________ Yep. That's an age old dictum. Hell Romney got it right at the end of his camping--but in the beginning his campaign speeches did not contain enough of that. At the end--he nailed it though. But it was at the end of his speech.

206

This story is kind of funny - if the outcome weren't so tragic.  It's the same 'original genius' you see at all large unwieldy corporations.  (I spent 20 years in these environments.)  It's the ego-maniacal GM that says, 'yah, forget what $12 MIL of high-end product marketing research/impact studies say - I KNOW THIS MARKET!'  While not as dire, it also shares the bug of having really expensive consequences 99 times out of 100.  Funny shit.  While it was a complete clusterf*ck, I'll applaud their vision and hope its something the party will continue to develop - hopefully in time for '14.

207 Because the Republican party is stupid.

It's a sad day in the world when Democrats are smarter and do things that much better than Republicans.


Thanks for fucking my country.

208 wash post polling data showed that every group moved toward romney except those that did better economically. Who ever that would be.

209 You right-wingers failed at your ORCA because you are anti-science and become easily confused and frightened by technology.

210 How many Americans even know what a marxist is? I'd say less than 20%. People are really stupid. Not just ignorant on current events, but generally stupid.

211 Yea, I think we will have to move on our drug war stuff. That's the safest play, and quite frankly a play I agree with personally. And it isn't that hard to make a very conservative pitch for it. Drug enforcement laws are a police power. Generally, police powers have been left to the states and the specific province of the states. As small government conservatives, we should have no desire in creating more laws making these illegal at a federal level, especially when the states are perfectly capable of making those laws themselves. We don't have to personally agree with the idea of smoking weed, just as one may not agree with the idea of drinking alchohol, but that doesn't mean we have to ban it at a federal level in order to be on the conservative side of the issue.

212

Doink.  *received one vote Republican*

 

Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.  *sent three votes Democrat*

213 I got no calls in NY for my Senate Candidate, Congressional Candidate or President. My state senator was ringing me off the hook, and the dems called when the hook was on. Disgraceful.

214 It should have been Operation Tyrannosaur.

215

Damn. I guess all those poly sci dinks in the Democratic party new what they were doing when they selected that major. I guess you can engineer a slick atom splitter, but if you donÂ’t control the gumÂ’nt purse you have to stand in line behind the people wanting Obama phones and food stamps. He who has the gold rules.

216

I was an ORCA volunteer in Central PA.

Got my "Watcher" Certificate in the mail from county party guy, no problem.

My problem came when I attempted to log-in. Evidently all in PA were given 7-digit passwords when the "app" would only take 5 digits.

They called with new password, but then the "app" didn't work. Turns out the default browser on my Samsung Galaxy S III wouln't work with their site. They didn't have any suggestions when I called about it. I figured "What the hell" and downloaded Chrome for my phone then it worked.

So I used the app from 11 am till closing.

Like you...not really sure how effective it was.

217 Florida bans 'audible conversations' on phones, but you could text info on your phone or Ipad or whatever you tekkies call that thing.  

218 So Chis Christie was just one of the Orcas in the pod that killed RRs chances?

219 Who the hell came up with the name ORCA anyway?

Should have been named TURD.

220 Damn. Thanks for the play-by-play and for volunteering your time.

221 The revenge voters need to suffer greatly in order to have a come to Jesus moment. Posted by: tubal at November 08, 2012 04:06 PM (BoE3Z) Not ever gonna happen. The left has been murdering peasants for over two centuries, if that doesn't do it, nothing will.

222

Posted by: Rich at November 08, 2012 04:14 PM (arczc)

 

I always go back to the fact that it took a Constitutional Amendment to make alcohol illegal.... but somehow only a Federal Law to make Pot Illegal....

 

It seems to me, that the precedent was set by alcohol.....

223 MJ, you can always e-mail me at benaoshq at gmail.com

224 remember when MOMMA ORCA was so ANGRY that she hurled BABY ORCA on the deck of the BOAT?

225 Shorter election:

Too many millions voted for Santa Claus.

Too few millions cared.

226 re: 'I was signed up as an OCRA volunteer and I got a sick feeling in the first phone call when I was told, "We definitely want only the best and most qualified volunteers for this" and suspected I would be asked to invest in a time share by the time the call was through.'

When I keep saying how the depressed turnout, especially among Randomly Selected White Dudes, happened because Romney (and the campaign he ran) is "offputting"—how he in fact *did* send out this vibe that, like Obama said (meaning something completely different), he's "not one of us" and disdains "us"—this is what kind of thing I mean.

The Dems should be the *only* party of petty, desperately climbing, hothouse shits. They're *better* at it. When the GOP acts like that (as it has, increasingly, from Bush I on), it just seems gross and time-sharey to real top-of-the-food-chain guys (and the women who gush for them, and the people whose aspirations lie elsewhere)—and in Randomly Selected White Dude's daily life, this is what the people who make his life *suck* are like.

The most he can do to resist them is not help them. So he does it.

227 Did anyone else participate in the MASSIVELY OVERHYPED Monday night call? I got multiple emails teasing an important call on election eve, featuring...two VERY special guests!

Pretty cool, I thought! First, they'll actually tell me what I'm supposed to do and when my app and info is coming, since I haven't heard from anyone yet.  Second, Mitt and Paul might patch into the call for a couple of minutes.  Or Marco Rubio. Newt? Dick Morris? Anyone?

Well no. There was no additional info, just the introduction of our two VERY special guests, pollster Neil Newhouse and Rich Beeson.  I only knew Beeson's name from spam emails, but I knew Newhouse from supposedly leaked internal polls.  Kind of a letdown, but hey, maybe I am getting some inside info from the campaign to fire me up! Internal polls!

Newhouse gets on and tells us that Romney is up by one nationally in Rasmussen and Gallup.  Which of course everyone on the call already knew 12 hours earlier because we are freaking enthusiastic supporters volunteering to take time off work and sit in a polling place all day.  So thanks for telling us nothing. But then the internals...cool! He's going to tell us that we're going to shock the world tomorrow! Or he'll say we've locked down VA, FL, NC and CO, and are surging in OH and WI.  Or maybe a tease to expect at least one state to go in our column that nobody is talking about.  Something, anything.  No.  He says that internals show 6 races in swing states within two points.  So get out there and do good work, because these are margin of error races.  Thanks.  That was it. Not "we're up by very small margins within MoE", or "we're leading a couple and trailing a couple".  No, just "6 races within 2 points", which is really saying "we're down in six swing states and can't even say any that we are winning. It was the most demoralizing call they could have had.  They simply should not have even done it. I told my aunt about it (she was supposed to be on the call, but couldn't get through). She was completely demoralized too.  Of course, 24 hours later I understood.  The internals were right.  They trailed in every single freaking swing state. But why even have that call? And why tease it as getting to hear from a couple of special guests, when it is a couple of people nobody cares about?

For people who don't want to hear about ORCA stories, then read another thread.  This didn't cause Romney to lose, but it was a telling, frustrating experience.

228 Yeah nothing suspicious about the level of turnout in cities. Posted by: Blue Falcon in Boston at November 08, 2012 03:46 PM (KCvsd) Scott Brown probably won, too.

229 The stupid party. Huh. If only we were as organized and ruthless as they say

230 It's not amazing to see how much romney's campaign sucked. His GOTV was terrible.

ace, rubio is going to iowa in a couple weeks

231 who the hell built this ORCA thing ? axelrod ??

232 All the apps in the world won't keep blacks from voting their race.

233 OT but related/

Re-Posted from earlier thread:

I have to say that the call from home app was kinda shitty from a user-interface criteria. The page was too long, forcing you to scroll up and down between calls... sometimes froze when trying to start it up... and WORST OF ALL, the buttons were just static images... nothing happens at all when you press them to signify your action was triggers. No depression-state of image, no animation or anything on the screen indicating you've moved to the next step in the process. Also, overlooking someone in my family doing the calls, I noticed that he failed to notice the two first questions, "do/who do you plan to vote for?" and jumped right into the script instead.

A billion dollars and that's your Call From Home Ap? C'mon GOP, get your stuff together.

234 Well, I won't shed a tear this winter when they are out of work & freezing their asses off. Elections have consequences. Posted by: rickb223 (I am John Galt) at November 08, 2012 03:59 PM (GFM2b) AMEN. This is probably THE biggest disconnect to me. These asshats voted for Obama, WTF? I will not feel sorry for them when they get laid off.

235

236 was this decisive in any way? of course not.

Of course it was.  We lost by ~2% (well, 3-4, I guess).  A well coordinated GOTV could have made that up fairly easily.

237 I am very much concerned that Repubs legalize. That would REALLY suck, both because it cuts into our reach into sovereign states, and because it cleans out the gene pool of retards that keeps us communitarians in office. Fortunately elections will soon no longer be a problem (this last was an easy steal) and drogas makes the restless natives much less restless.

238 Iranian jets fire on USA drone at 4:50 am EST on Nov.1. President goes campaigning: Obama Schedule || Thursday, November 1, 2012 by KEITH KOFFLER on OCTOBER 31, 2012, 9:16 PM 9:20 am || Departs the White House 10:35 am || Arrives Green Bay, Wisconsin 10:40 am || Delivers remarks at a campaign rally; Austin Straubel International Airport, Green Bay 11:45 am || Departs Green Bay 1:15 pm PT || Arrives Las Vegas 2:10 pm PT || Delivers remarks at a campaign rally; Cheyenne Sports Complex, Las Vegas 3:25 pm PT || Departs Las Vegas 5:55 pm MT || Arrives Denver 7:00 pm MT || Delivers remarks at a campaign rally; Coors Events Center, Denver 8:45 pm MT || Departs Denver 1:05 am || Arrives Columbus, Ohio

239 Well, it looks like all the assurances that Mitt Romney had the infrastructure and organization and competence since he'd been running for President for so long  were a bit overblown.

240 Ugh. This hurt to read. I think the meme that Romney ran a good campaign is going to fall apart soon. For everybody blaming the electorate, get out the vote is critical, vastly more important than ads. Vastly. Evidently the Romney team wasn't as organized as we thought. Par Caddell was right. Hell, McCain did better in 2008.

241 How many Americans even know what a marxist is?

He was the funny looking guy who smoked cigars in those old black and white movies.  So there.

242 ORCA sux whale dick.

243

It's not technology - it's people. 99% of this comes down to ground game at the precinct level on Election Day. The County Party has to have Precint Captains that are organized, dedicated, and willing to hand-hold volunteers. Think platoon sergeant or squad leader. I worked in Northern Virginia - PWC. I started out with a very motivated and dedicated precinct captain - phone calls and emails weeks and days in advance. On Election day at 0530 she had a portable tent set up at the poll, a table, stickers and literature, a portable propane heater, coffee, phones and phone numbers for everybody and their grandmother in Party, and a rock solid schedule with volunteers that promised to show up. Every little hiccup and snafu was promptly reported up the chain of command and resolved

I was later dispatched to another precinct, one on the east side of Route 1 - a heavy blue area, because that captain or the person above him had failed to secure an adequate number of reliable volunteers ahead of E-Day. The contrast could not have been deeper. It was like the precinct captain was just going through the motions. I ended  up spending the rest of the day there, freezing my ass off, doing what I could to get as many R's cast as I could. We were totally outmatched, however. I could not believe the number of voters that were driven to the polls by Obama's team. Parking was really tight (it was a school with poor parking)  and the entrance to the poll was at the middle of the bus loop, so I could see the Obama drag and drop operation first hand. They had quite the operation going.

If you look at the PWC precinct data for the D-rich precincts in the east end of the county, you will see how we were simply slaughtered by the GOTV effort in "their" precincts in what used to be a reliably Republican county.

Stay turgid, morons.

244 I really don't grasp the argument that we "should" have run a more conservative candidate. We ran the one that got the votes in the primary. I swear, people act like nominees still come from smokey rooms at the convention. And I note this as a hardshell con and Perrykrishna.

245 @182

I am a PM for one of the largest technology integration firms in the country.

Creating a nationwide on demand, highly available and instantaneously updated database of voters who have voted and who have not voted is child's play.

You could even have the system dispatch drivers to pick up voters to be chauffered to their polling site.

This is not complex stuff.

We can create rocket propelled sky cranes but a simple and effective GOTV implementation is beyond these idiots.

Maddening!!

246 #219-> I know that is the law, but not in my polling place (Miami Gardens)...lol. You couldn't hear yourself think over the 98342 conversations going on in the room most of the day. Nobody minded me surfing the web on my laptop, although the OFA guy did bitch a little when I snapped a photo with the DSLR inside the precinct itself. That reminds me, I need to see how those shots came out...sigh.

247 JFC it just gets better and better

248 I am also told that 2000 and 2004 were vast improvements from the decades before. That GOTV for Republicans was almost nonexistent --don't know that personally.

249 'Orca' came from trying to one-up the Obama-ites, who in 2008 gave their GOTV efforts the name of some shark


Orcas eat sharks---see what they did there?  Clever, no?  Snarky,,,,,

250

 Who the hell came up with the name ORCA anyway?

Should have been named TURD.

 

I wish everyone would quit it with the nicknames already.

251 I always go back to the fact that it took a Constitutional Amendment to make alcohol illegal.... but somehow only a Federal Law to make Pot Illegal.... It seems to me, that the precedent was set by alcohol..... ------ It was. But that was before the "Switch in Time" when that Amendment passed. Today's Supreme Court would undoubtedly believe the Federal Government would have the power to ban alcohol via the Commerce Clause if not for the repeal of the amendment. In other words, had there never been prohibition and the Federal Government simply passed a law today creating prohibition, this shit stain of a court would uphold it, save for one man, Clarence Thomas.

252
So.....

Narhwals out perform Orca's. 

By a bunch it seems.....

253 the buttons were just static images... nothing happens at all when you press them to signify your action was triggers. That threw me for a while, too. No status, nothing. Then again, the relevant human interface standards only came about in 1984.

254 *facepalm*

255

ace, rubio is going to iowa in a couple weeks

 

Sweet. I'm going to get in liberal's faces and ask why they aren't voting for Rubio. WHY ARE YOU RACIST?? WHY DO YOU HATE CUBANS!!!??

256 I thought Obama offices open everywhere was a money suck and a bad idea. Fuuuuuuuck. Guess I called that one wrong.

257 GOP out of my bones I'm in need of a remedy to cure me from loving you It may sound a little extreme but I'll do what I have to do Chorus: Bury your jacket in my backyard CArry your picture in my shoe Keep walkin' til the hurtin' stops Keep walkin' til my temperture drops Keep walkin' til the fever is gone And your out of my bones I'm in need of medicine Something strong that'll work real fast That I can take to fortify me To keep my arms from taking you back Chase that ghost out from under my bed Still these voices in my head They keep talkin' weaving their spell But I'm talkin' to myself I get em' talkin' daylight til dawn Til your out of my bones Sweet amnesia come and set me free I just need to get you out of me Chorus Til your out of my bones randy travis

258 Fuck- NARWHAL. The unicorn of the ocean.

259 Wait, wait, wait.  They forgot something even MORE important on their checklist.  A towel.  After all a towel, is about the most massively useful thing you can have.

260 Hey!! How 'bout that stock market?? WOO HOO! Workin' til I'm 80!

261 #213

Pot is just another "States rights" issue.   That was actually Ryan's position on this. . .that the Federal gov't shouldn't get involved.

My take on this is that, in a manner somewhat analogous to gay marriage, or handgun concealed carry, legal marijuana is mostly a demographic issue.  We already have some sort of "medical" marijuana program, at least on paper, in a dozen plus states, though quite a few of these have been stonewalled by internal State politics.

Polling shows that nearly 50% of American adults support legalization right now, and the numbers continue to increase a bit each year, to the point where in ten years, we'll probably have a number of other states with decriminalized cannabis.

In contrast, they still effectively have versions of residual ALCOHOL prohibition in some of the red states, so I don't think we're going to be seeing legal weed in many of these places during our lifetimes.

262 The real problem of course is the repub party should have this crap in place, for decades really, no matter who the candidate is. It is so easy to vote these days, the stay homers really boggle me.

263

General woundwort, please contact me regarding your thoughts, anonymously or whatever.

That is exactly what needs to be done.

prescient11@yahoo.com

264 What I'm going to be saying to O voters every time I see one complain about getting laid off, seeing their taxes jump, etc. "You bought it. You broke it." Now that it's all over, I'm going to say that I did find Romney pretty offputting. I completely believe that he's an honorable, honest guy, but somehow he just gives off a "used car salesman" vibe. I got past it (and kept my mouth shut about it during the campaign), but I'm thinking that a lot of others didn't. "Not one of us" is exactly the phrase.

265 Ok. Maybe ORCa sucked. How could a pub not know to vote, even without a GOTV call

266

One vote, two votes, three votes for Obama! No votes, no poll watchers, no election judges for Romney!

267 I thought Obama offices open everywhere was a money suck and a bad idea. Fuuuuuuuck. Guess I called that one wrong.

Posted by: JollyRoger at November 08, 2012 04:22 PM (t06LC)

------

Sounds like while we were urging our folks to get to the booths.....  The Obamabots went out and drug theirs to the boths.

268 now what shall we do with Prince Reebus?

269 Holy crap.. what a clusterfuck.

270 My outrage meter has blown an gasket and is leaking my brains all over the place. I need to take a break from this shit, I'm exhausted. A couple of weeks of video games, pron and booze should do the trick. See ya's.

271 Maybe better organization would've helped some.  But this calamity of a loss has a whole lot more to do with the systemic rot going on in the minds of the electorate, vs. anything else.  IMO, of course.   

272 Costco cashier asked if I wanted to donate a dollar for something or the other. "Ask Obama for the money." My new mantra.

273

It would make me feel better too if I didn't think the GOP would go right back out in 2016 and nominate exactly the same sort of candidate again. But, it's the GOP, so they will. Romney might be a sharp guy, but seems like a lot of the folks working for him, well, not so sharp.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

 

Maybe it's finally time to give Libertarians a shot.

 

You've got 4 years to build them up and make them look viable as a replacement for the GOP. If a bunch of conservatives and tea partiers put their mind to it, it could be pulled off.

 

The Libertarians don't have any Akins or Murdochs that like to free riff on the theology of rape.

 

Regardless of what party banner you move forward on, I really think republicans need to read this Washington Examiner article: tinyurl.com/b9b3dyt

274 So what do I do with all the damn pudding sitting on the shelf? Oh, I have an idea... What's the address of the place in Boston that schemed this shit up?

275 On Twitter, Fox News' Jennifer Griffin follows up by saying the attack on the American drone by Iran was not revealed until after the election because it was a "classified" mission. DoD didn't reveal Iranian fighter jets fired at US drone in days before the US Presidential election because drone on "classified" mission. LOL! Was that the fastest declassification in DOD history?

276 "Pot is just another "States rights" issue. That was actually Ryan's position on this. . .that the Federal gov't shouldn't get involved. " First I've heard of it. Why wasn't this mentioned more?

277 I should also note, the goggles they do nothing.

278 Creating a nationwide on demand, highly available and instantaneously updated database of voters who have voted and who have not voted is child's play.

I don't know about "child's play."  It seems that's what team R/R thought.  But it is actually astoundingly straight-forward once you know the nuts and bolts.

Heck, sans the scalability and javascript UI (I'm no good, personally, with UI) I could have built something to do this in a day or two.  Given several months, I'd not only have added the scalability and the UI, I would have load tested the F out the thing, had redundancy plans in place, and provided solid documentation well ahead of the night before.

279 Who were these IT morons, rejects from the Geek Squad? Even if you are dumb enough to put an untested system into production, you ALWAYS have a backup plan. "Would you consider that a design problem, or a launch problem?"

280

@274

Sweet. That's exactly what we need to do. Someone asks for gas money next time. Fuck 'em. Go to City Hall and ask them.

281

When I was in Houston in 08 i tried to volunteer at the Republican HQ. I was getting out of law school and had visions of doing... fuck something.... constructive with my spare time there.

Turns out the thing I could do that was constructive was empty out boxes of old fliers and posters into the dumpster. Otherwise sit around. This was in the fall of the election season mind you. Besides being mind numbingly boring, I thought a more consrutive use of my time would be fapping at home.

282

There is no reason we can't have communist agitprop put in service of conservatism.

 

You look at something like regulatory licensing schemes in all the blue cities and blue states - it is rigging ownership of the means of production, to create class barriers.

 

But we don't even bother to contest the socialist vote. We won't win it - well duh. But you don't need to win it to cut into it.

283 206 Chris where were you? Posted by: tasker at November 08, 2012 04:08 PM (r2PLg) Western VA. A very red precinct. I checked later, and Romney got more votes there than McCain did in '08, so at least where I was they did get turn out up. Too bad it was a clusterfark everywhere else. Posted by: Chris at November 08, 2012 04:14 PM (gI9Bk) _______________ Thanks Chris. Well at least you guys spanked them. Damn VA was maddeningly close Election Night --hell we were ahead there most of the night. I think half of Fairfax came in late and won it for Obama.

284 I swear, people act like nominees still come from smokey rooms at the convention. And I note this as a hardshell con and Perrykrishna. Explain why any decent human being would run for office. Seriously, the people for whom I would probably love to vote look at the current political landscape and say fuck that noise. It's all well and good to say They should suck it up, but would you do that to your family?

285 "Maybe it's finally time to give Libertarians a shot. " That would require taking over the party and purging the lunatic fringe. Could be doable, though.

286

SnakePlizzken

 

It was the same way in NC  (at least for early voting).

287

(CNBC) All the problems investors face-from a fiscal meltdown to the various economic woes around the world-add up to one daunting prospect: Another possible recession just over the horizon.

As the financial world puts Tuesday's presidential election behind it, the light in the tunnel could be an economic freight train.

Funny how all of these stories are coming out after the election. I'm sure it's still all Bush's fault

288 For myself, I was a Democrat for most of my voting life, but they went insane a while back, so I became a Republican.
They are obviously hapless and soft, not worth getting your heart broken over.
All I want is government off my back as much as is reasonable, and allowed to live my life, paying a fair share.
Where the hell do I go now?

289 "246 I really don't grasp the argument that we "should" have run a more conservative candidate. We ran the one that got the votes in the primary. " Mitt's major selling point was his awesome, clockwork campaign and organization. Which apparently was overhyped. But yes, this was a bad year for candidates.

290 >>>I'm just going to keep reposting this on every thread until it sinks in.

Maybe I'll just keep reposting this on every thread until it sinks in.

They don't like us. They want us to lose. They will do everything they can to make us lose. Ethical or not. They won't avoid wedge issues they will make the whole appearance about them. They won't edit out gaffes, they will replay them in slow motion from different angles. They won't ask about reasonable stances and give you time to explain they will only ask about the most extreme positions and demand a yes or no. The more face time you have with them is only more opportunity to F* up and give them exactly what they *WANT* to ruin your candidacy.

The only way this gets solved is not by appearing on liberal media and therefore giving them the clips they want AND ratings which mean revenue AND more influence; instead working on reinvigorating and creating conservative media and culture alternatives.

291

Wait, I was told us SoCons cost Mitt the election.

 

292 In off year elections, we have 100% vote by mail in my county.  Why there isn't a knock on my door the day after I get my ballot is amazing.  I've checked the numbers and although we are outnumbered, a straight line vote by 95% of republicans would win us every race.

293 Save the Orcas! Free Shamu!

294 Maybe it's finally time to give Libertarians a shot.

You've got 4 years to build them up and make them look viable as a replacement for the GOP. If a bunch of conservatives and tea partiers put their mind to it, it could be pulled off.

I am highly intrigued by your insanely idealistic and ridiculous fantasy which will never, ever happen.

295 "...and lost to a guy who got less votes than McCain '08?Dammit, dammit, dammit,..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP5KzBJ42r4

296 "Costco cashier asked if I wanted to donate a dollar for something or the other.

"Ask Obama for the money."

My new mantra."

I think I will get some cards printed up with that obscene logo.

297 How could a pub not know to vote, even without a GOTV call

It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't think it matters, or they don't think anyone "cares" about them.

Go look at my blog (yes, I have one) "Stories from the (Phone) Line: Cindy."  She's a veteran of GOTV campaigns.  One of the biggest parts of GOTV is the connection, the relationship, between two real human people.

It's one thing to know, in a kind of abstract way, that things suck and it'd be nice if they'd change.  It's another to know someone is counting on you; that what you do is important to them.

298 272 My outrage meter has blown an gasket and is leaking my brains all over the place. I need to take a break from this shit, I'm exhausted. A couple of weeks of video games, pron and booze should do the trick. See ya's. Posted by: dananjcon at November 08, 2012 04:25 PM (jvd3N) __________________ Bears are going down. da Steelers.

299 Operation ORCA was a disaster because is was competing against Operation Free Shit Low Info Voter.

300 Actually, I'm going to continue donating to the ASPCA. But for everything else, "Go ask Obama for the money."

301 289

Notice how Barry's reelection factors into this "problems investors face" not at all.  It's the Euro, I tells ya....the Euro!!

302 Funny how all of these stories are coming out after the election. I'm sure it's still all Bush's faultPosted by: TheQuietMan

Bush never governed as a fiscal conservative so in many respects it is.

303 My husband and I both signed up 2 weeks before the election. We both received initial emails saying we'd be contacted by someone soon, but we never were. I was never able to get in touch with someone, despite calling and emailing. Also, I made phone calls from home, but the script I was given seemed more like a survey than a GOTV.

304 #278

I think its because Romney (anti medical pot) and Ryan (States rights) were in conflict here, and that always means the VP candidate shuts up and adopts the Presidential's candidates position.

Here it is, if you want to see it:
http://tinyurl.com/c3mq7c7

305 YAPHANK, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) — New York City and Long Island are following in New Jersey’s footsteps in instituting an odd-even gas rationing system. In an effort to ease long lines associated with the the fuel crunch taking place in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a rationing system will go into effect on Friday. Beginning at 6 a.m., those with license plates ending in an odd number will be able to buy gas on odd numbered days. But But But I thought obama and fema were doing such a great yob?

306 very interesting: **290 For myself, I was a Democrat for most of my voting life, but they went insane a while back, so I became a Republican. They are obviously hapless and soft, not worth getting your heart broken over. All I want is government off my back as much as is reasonable, and allowed to live my life, paying a fair share. Where the hell do I go now? Posted by: tubal ** As a former dem, what would it have taken to make one into a Romney-Democrat?

307 "How could a pub not know to vote, even without a GOTV call" Who cares? This is about getting warm bodies to a place and having them perform a menial action. As many as you can.

308 83 I see there's a timewarp again. I will continue to be bitchy about the ORCA or die shit because there was only one person (fluffy) who actually took two seconds to say what it was. When you cannot get your shit together enough to explain what it is to a group of people who are in your prime volunteer pool, you are failing from the beginning. Posted by: alexthechick - SMOD. Coming not nearly soon enough. at November 08, 2012 03:55 PM (VtjlW) What she said. There was a lot of "if you don't know what ORCA is then you aren't doing your part" faggotry being tossed about. Didn't know then. Still don't know now. Because I don't like your fucking tone.

309

First I've heard of it. Why wasn't this mentioned more?

 

Because it's a tribal culture thing.

 

If you think you should be able to eat pretty much whatever the hell plant you want without a federal regulatory agency getting in the way, well, that makes you liberal.

 

Actually it does... but not the way they mean it.

 

GOPers really need to get over this shallow shit and unify toward the greater cause of ending the leviathan state. You don't have to approve of what your neighbor does, you just have to acknowledge it's his right.

310 Take over Libertarian party ??? Winning!!!

311 305 My husband and I both signed up 2 weeks before the election. We both received initial emails saying we'd be contacted by someone soon, but we never were. I was never able to get in touch with someone, despite calling and emailing. Also, I made phone calls from home, but the script I was given seemed more like a survey than a GOTV. Posted by: Mrs. Dang at November 08, 2012 04:31 PM (6jAtn) __________________ I remember several commenters reporting the same.

312

This explains a lot.

I think I'm going to go throw up now.  Romney was supposed to be this uber-competent guy, but I guess they were too inexperienced in this sort of thing.

313 Not surprising that this was a disaster.  The first disaster occurred years ago when the RNC developed the current primary rules and voting schedule.



The second disaster occurred when the agreed to allow the MFM to host the primary debates.


The third disaster was when they allowed the MFM to host the Presidential debates.


Sure the MFM was instrumental in getting Obama elected.  But the damn RNC gave them every opportunity.  No MFM host, no Candy Crowley ambush.

314 Voting is SOOOOOO last week. Ya'll won't need to be worrying about it anymore...and you will have that much more time for choom and fapping.

315

'I am a PM for one of the largest technology integration firms in the country.

Creating a nationwide on demand, highly available and instantaneously updated database of voters who have voted and who have not voted is child's play.

You could even have the system dispatch drivers to pick up voters to be chauffered to their polling site.

This is not complex stuff....'

 

 
Posted by: General Woundwort at November 08, 2012 04:20 PM (06lNq)

 

Respectfully sir, then get on it. 

316 The technical problems presented by an ORCA implementation are solved thousands of times every day all over the world. This really was a piece of cake from a requirements perspective. Christ, we're literally talking 1 data element per voter that needs to be updated. Scalability.....oops. I'm also in favor of an emergence of Libertarians. Let's let the true fiscal conservatives that don't give a fuck what anyone does with their bodies in their own homes on their own time a crack at this. That antiquated and basically dead "GOP thingy" ain't going to EVER be able to unite social conservatives and fiscal conservatives under one big tent...and then turn them out on election day.

317

AllenG

Out of curiousity, how hard do you think it would be to create a program that assembled voting info in a County from a publicly available Co. Board of Election site.

In my county, just as a completely random example, all voter information is online -- including a voter's name, party registration, address and voting history (the EU data privacy laws would have a field day with that).

318 Ho-ho-ho you conservative Republicans have no toys to offer the little children! It's a wonder anyone at all comes to sit in your lap!

319 Does the RNC do any post-election work? Seems like this would be a good time to call up and ask the 68% why they're listed as Republicans but did not see any reason to go vote. You know, what would it have taken to get you to vote?

320 #57 Engage the populace. Late night TV. Various web channels. Make appearances. Yuk it up w/ the hosts. Be of good cheer. Get out, shake hands (which Mitt finally did at 3 weeks out)....

This right here is one of the only sensible things that has been said at the HQ in the past 2 days. Abide it or fail for life.
--

Clearly you know what you're talking about in terms of how to engage people to get them on your side.

321 Rep. Ron Paul, whose maverick presidential bids shook the GOP, said in the wake of this week's elections that the country has already veered over the fiscal cliff and he sees no chance of righting ship in a country where too many people are dependent on government. "We're so far gone. We're over the cliff," the Texas Republican told Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop" program. "We cannot get enough people in Congress in the next 5-10 years who will do wise things." Gee amazing, me agreeing with Ron Paul

322 This election will look great to the GOP in the future.

323 From today's White House Dossier (worth a read):

It is estimated that more black people, not fewer, voted in 2012 than 2008. More Latinos voted, not fewer, and an even greater percentage of them supported Obama this time. The youth vote did not decline from 2008. All this despite flagging enthusiasm for the president.

HereÂ’s a telling anecdote related by a senior Obama aide to the press pool on WednesdayÂ’s flight from Chicago back to Washington.

During flight, a campaign official talked about the ground game on background . . .

In describing the ground game, the official told of a conversation he had with a top field director on Monday. The GOP had tweeted that they had knocked on 75,000 doors in Ohio the day prior. Not to worry, the director said, “we knocked on 376,000.”

324 The unions have been doing GOTV for decades. Republican relatively just started trying to match it.

325 I tried the ORCA project once, on a dare. Her name was Betty.

326 >"Costco cashier asked if I wanted to donate a dollar for something or the other.


"Sure. For $5."

327 Obviously Mitt was under the impression that it was all taken care of.

328 The Obamabots went out and drug theirs to the boths.  Posted by: fixerupper at November 08, 2012 04:24 PM (yzX2R)

They paid them or they threatened them with union or Black thugs.  Old people in cities are easy to manipulate.

Additionally, as an IT professional, I can tell you that electronic voting on screen with no paper ballot to serve as a way to verify what the vote actually was would be so easy to manipulate.  Just write some code to work only on 11/6/12 that makes every 3rd or 4th vote for one guy flip to the other guy.  You bury it deep in the code and then have it delete itself and change the compiler and other logs.  My Goodness, SciFi novels have been pointing this out forever.  With a half a billion dollars in your campaign chest you can find some programmers to do this in key states.  Some would do it for free for hacker bragging rights.

329 But But But I thought obama and fema were doing such a great yob? Posted by: Nevergiveup at November 08, 2012 04:32 PM (79ueO) ORCA sounds just like FEMA. I worked for FEMA once, after a local flood. Most entertaining experience of my life. Of course, nothing got done. But boy, did they look good doing it!

330 As a manager of many IT projects, this one is problematic. If it was "owned" by Romney, it is a one time effort, and perhaps nothing can be built upon it. If it is owned by the RNC, there is some hope. This effort should have been run in parallel with a traditional effort. Paper lists and the pdf should both have been sent. After the election, surverys should have been performed to learn lessons. It's not too late, run this in parallel for the 2014 election. Establish a measure of success. Measure the results after the 2014 election. Continue running in parallel until success is achieved. I'm available, if you'd like to succede next time. Your're welcome.

331 #124  I had a friend who worked ORCA in Michigan.  She told me that the program came from Microsoft. 

I don't have any proof,  only what she told me when she got the training.

332

The "crawl over broken glass voters" voted. I got up off of my sick bed and dragged myself around to the polls. I was one of the 95,000 in Philly who voted correctly. Yay me.

Problem is, we seemed to think that there were many more of those "broken glass" voters than there were. Again, I'm blinded by my environment......but my normally apolitical friends did not like Obama but saw no reason to vote for Romney. I tried and tried and tried.

333

I am highly intrigued by your insanely idealistic and ridiculous fantasy which will never, ever happen.

 

 

Posted by: Hollowpoint at November 08, 2012 04:30 PM (SY2Kh)

 

Yeah... no way a third party ever gets into power...

334 Amazing that in 2012 we're agonizing over GOTV efforts and formulating strategy based on what worked in 1980.

Let's leave the stupid to the GOP. They're good at it.

335

the GOP could start their primaries in the following 3 states in any order:

 

1. Texas

2. Missouri

3. Alabama

 

that would give any acceptable conservative a level field to start before Iowa, or New Hampshire. Liberal GOP'ers wouldn't have huge momentum right off of the bat with those three starting points.

 

336 Thanks Chris.

Well at least you guys spanked them.

Damn VA was maddeningly close Election Night --hell we were ahead there most of the night.

I think half of Fairfax came in late and won it for Obama.

Posted by: tasker at November 08, 2012 04:27 PM (r2PLg)

I was very optimistic while I was watching all those people-most of whom were Republicans-come in to vote. I thought, man, if this is what it's like across the country, we've got this. Heard also about packed polling places elsewhere in red parts of VA. Very disappointing to go home after spending 13 hours straight at the polling place and discover that not only did Dems come out, too, but that Republicans hadn't. Not only that, but to have VA go blue again? Ugh. Felt very much like a wasted day and a wasted last few months of effort in general.

337

@321

I like that. We lost. We need to learn from it. Adapt from it.

338 It's been a while since Ace posted about how Sandy cost us the election.

339 And again with the stupid misspelled sockpuppet. is it 5 oclock yet?

340 I dunno .. I never heard of any big problems in the Texas Rangers IT dept.

341 I participated here in NH.  I received my packet well ahead of time and was emailed my credentials two days prior to the election.  I was told that the polls opened at 7 and to be there at 6:45.  Polls actually opened at 8 so that was a bad start.

My check list was different from the one above - mine did note to not forget my credentials and only listed bring you chair once.

My problem came when I couldn't get onto the website at all.  Tried a couple of different browsers and still nothing.  At this point, I manually checked off names and then would leave to call them in every hour.  I did receive a call around 10am from the Romney guy who emailed me my credentials to let me know that the Orca 'app' didn't work in Rochester and Dover and wanted to know if I had a hard copy of the list (which I did) otherwise they would bring me one.  He told me to keep doing what I was doing.

It was difficult to hear the names being called off and that there were two separate lines split alphabetically so I would miss half the people coming in.  I have no idea if what I did was received anywhere or if it helped at all.

Every person who worked at the polls and had worked there in 2008 said that the turn-out was bigger than they had ever had - they were afraid they were going to run out of ballots. 

Throughout the day most of the people were seniors and middle age folks - very few young people where showing up.  This changed around 5pm - a ton of young people started coming in and surprisingly enough - they were all first time voters who got to register to vote right there!  I would not imagine that these were Romney voters - I could be wrong. 

Romney lost my ward by 61 votes!

342 This is what the Democrats used- http://bit.ly/UgY99L.

343 I'm in SW Virginia...I got lots of calls asking for donations leading up to the election (after I donated the first time so they had my phone #), but got zero calls asking me to vote or if I had voted on election day. None to the wife either, but I doubt she'd have been on their lists.

My county actually flipped this time (narrowly went for Obama in 2008 before I got here) but went for Romney this time...but, like someone said, the cows can't vote here so only 1300 or so registered voters in the entire county.

344 New Ace up.

345 Listening to some Obama voter on FOX complaining that FEMA offered her a hotel. "I don't want to live in a hotel on Chrismas!" - Hey NYC - GFYS

346 Isn't it customary for Presidents to give pressers on the Thursday after presidential elections? I know, I know. and Fore!

347 ORCA would be the name of the guy who raped me before you forced me to have the baby right?

348 #311

I think the GOP is divided here.  You've got libertarians who take the "Gov't stay out of it" with respect to marijuana, and then social conservatives with the "Say no to drugs" position.

I'd actually love to see the pro/anti marijuana support stats by political affiliation, then crosstabbed with age and marital status.

My understanding is that, again, like gay marriage, support for legal pot correlates fairly well with age of the demographic in question.  I'd assume it skews more Democrat, but I don't know that to be true for sure.

In the relatively near future, say over the next 2-3 cycles as the demographic inevitably shifts, this may become more of a live electoral issue. 

349

@337

Good. And no more fucking litmus tests that are unacceptable to voters. Wink and a nod like the dems do. Get elected and then govern conservative. No more saying what you believe if it loses votes.

Problem with Murdock was he was trying to thread the needle. "I support life but would make exceptions for rape and incest" Boom. Welcome senator.

350 I'm trying to figure out a way to goad a few lib family members into asking me for money over Thanksgiving so I can use my new mantra. ("Ask Obama for the money.") Any suggestions? E.g., "Hey Marty, how are things. I've had a KILLER year investing in the stock market!" (wait for it...) "Aunt Jeanie, I hear you're heading up a fundraising drive for Habitat." (wait for it...) "Dave, do you still have that college fund for James?" (wait for it...)

351 the GOP could start their primaries in the following 3 states in any order:
1. Texas
2. Missouri
3. Alabama
that would give any acceptable conservative a level field to start before Iowa, or New Hampshire. Liberal GOP'ers wouldn't have huge momentum right off of the bat with those three starting points.

Posted by: Dick Nixon at November 08, 2012 04:36 PM (VrVBw)

Amen, letting those Liberal Republicans in NH and Iowa pick a candidate.  It has enraged me for years to watch a damn caucus--which is so easy to manipulate decide who runs.

352 Having experienced many, if not all, of the problems JohnE described I'd like to add:

I posted here on Sunday that things were FUBAR with ORCA, but later asked Ace to delete the post as I didn't want to provide aid and comfort to the opposition. 

Here in Jefferson County, Colorado, I was told on Monday by a worker at the Victory (ha!) HQ that not only was my name not on "the list", but that over 200 people had shown up looking for poll-watcher "credentials"(!).

She sounded quite put-out about it too. She wanted to know how I had signed up, who told me I was work watching the polls. She then asked if I was a registered Republican. In other words, the local office acted as if ORCA was something they'd never heard of before Monday afternoon.

When I asked for the contact given me by Dan Centinello (natl coordinator) she hung up on me.

After hours of "training", even more hours spent trying to get my materials from my local HQ, Tuesday morning I gave up.

Having already voted early as suggested by the ORCA folks, I decided my part was done, so I hit the links later for a relaxing afternoon.

Always have a plan B.

353 I was very optimistic while I was watching all those people-most of whom were Republicans-come in to vote. I thought, man, if this is what it's like across the country, we've got this. Heard also about packed polling places elsewhere in red parts of VA. Very disappointing to go home after spending 13 hours straight at the polling place and discover that not only did Dems come out, too, but that Republicans hadn't. Not only that, but to have VA go blue again? Ugh. Felt very much like a wasted day and a wasted last few months of effort in general. Posted by: Chris at November 08, 2012 04:37 PM (gI9Bk) ______________________ Ugh, Chris. Thanks for doing what you could. I moved to Sacramento tho year...so. I guess I should have tried harder to get back to Vegas, and help.

354 The first time I heard of the ORCA project I thought it had something to do with Oprah. No lie.

355 Out of curiousity, how hard do you think it would be to create a program that assembled voting info in a County from a publicly available Co. Board of Election site.

Depends on the website and how Fd up it is.

Now, if I can get access to their underlying data somehow (sometimes you can, but not usually) it wouldn't be difficult at all.  If I'm limited to what's actually on their web page, then I'm screen scraping, and that's always iffy.

However, if it's public data, you should be able to issue a FOIA request to get your hands on a copy of that data- which you could then import in a number of ways.

Respectfully sir, then get on it.

Respectfully, this is our living, we don't do it for free.  More specifically, we don't *also* do it for free.  With the exception of playing games, I don't even normally like to look at my PC when I get home- and I love being a software developer.

Can't speak for the General, but if the Romney Campaign had offered to hire us (as they did for so many other positions) I might well have taken them up on the offer.  They didn't.  They made those decisions without seeking out the best talent in the country.

356 American Attitude ‏@marklindesr

Obama won 99.5% of the vote with 90% turnout in Philly? coughBScough

357 247 @182 I am a PM for one of the largest technology integration firms in the country. ___ Prime Minister?

358

That would require taking over the party and purging the lunatic fringe. Could be doable, though.

 

Yes. You have a problem, you fell a few million short. Clearly, not enough purging was done. Needs moar purging.

 

I guess we don't want to win in 2016 either then.

359 Our conservative party in Canada has something like this. It took years to build but it's now highly effective. I wouldn't throw it out because when done right this stuff is amazing.

360 There was a lot of "if you don't know what ORCA is then you aren't doing your part" faggotry being tossed about.

Didn't know then. Still don't know now. Because I don't like your fucking tone.

Posted by: Empire of Jeff at November 08, 2012 04:32 PM (6Hf3R)

 

I would have explained it had I ever seen anyone asking questions. As it was, I never said anything about it because I thought it was a secret and I didn't want to be the proverbial loose lips....

361 Yeah... no way a third party ever gets into power...

If you can't find examples post-Civil War, you have your answer.

362 By the way another great yob by Fema: I have basically not gotten any first class mail in over 2 weeks now in my business, meaning no money coming in, meaning I can't pay my bills. And the only ones giving me a break are the Military Credit Cards I hold, the rest and the banks are telling gee we're sorry but "To Fucking Bad. Pay Up"!

363 With a half a billion dollars in your campaign chest you can find some programmers to do this in key states. Some would do it for free for hacker bragging rights.
Posted by: Sherry McEvil, Wily Wrepublican Wench at November 08, 2012 04:35 PM

You won't hear anything about it. The new meme will be that those who suspect massive vote fraud from a campaign that did not hesitate to lie or break the law is on a par with "birferism."

We lost because Romney!, that's why. Harboring any thoughts critical of the Dem campaign is beneath the dignity of our wonderful oh-so-plugged-in pundits.

Even if it is easy.

364 ORCA - a name that looks cool if it ends up working. Stupidly ridiculous if it doesn't.

365 "Yes. You have a problem, you fell a few million short. Clearly, not enough purging was done. Needs moar purging." Yeah, it's ridiculous to think a fanatical, purge-happy minority can gain power.

366 I say make Iowa suck hind tit in the 2016 primaries. These people make GOP candidates jump through hoops, then vote Dem in the fall. Enough.

367 The Washington D.C. area and surrounding government infrastructure will be virtually destroyed by global warming over the next century, according to the latest study financed by American taxpayers. At the very least climate change will cause billions of dollars in damage to city and federal property in the District of Columbia, say researchers at the public institution, the University of Maryland, that disclosed the alarming news this week. This disaster will occur as a result of long-term sea level rise caused by global warming. It gets worse, according to the esteemed academics that conducted the in-depth probe. “Potential for significant damage will be even greater in the event of extreme weather like Hurricane Sandy,” they reveal in a press release announcing their findings. Over the next 100 years, continuing sea level rise could cause damages of more than $24.6 billion to Washington’s commercial property, museums, and government agencies. Wow finally some GOOD NEW

368 "To Fucking Bad. Pay Up"! Posted by: Nevergiveup at November 08, 2012 04:42 PM

You think it's bad now? Wait 'til Choom Boy's second term ramps up.

369 I say make Iowa {stew} in the 2016 primaries. These people make GOP candidates jump through hoops, then vote Dem in the fall. Enough.

I was thinking Texas and Utah first, myself.

370 Obama's fantastic response to Sandy continues MT @WSJ Breaking: NYC to begin gas rationing Friday, w/ even-odd system. http://on.wsj.com/hLB01C


FORWARD

371 Team Mitt wanted you to have an extra chair in case Clint Eastwood showed up...he needed something to yell at.

372 I have always advocated primaries by order of percent votes for Republicans.  And I would also prohibit caucuses.

373 "We're so far gone. We're over the cliff," the Texas Republican told Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop" program. "We cannot get enough people in Congress in the next 5-10 years who will do wise things."

Gee amazing, me agreeing with Ron Paul

Posted by: Nevergiveup at November 08, 2012 04:34 PM (79ueO)

Said the guy (not you NGU) that didn't support the Republican candidate.....

374 I do not know Edelson or any of the other insanely rich PAC donors, but, if they are still interested in a country run by makers not takers.  They need to take some of the currently unemployed American programmers in their 40s and 50s, of which there are tens of thousands, make sure they were always registered as Republicans and quietly build an integrated GOTV database and system.  Put out the word that it will be ready and available to the Senate/Congressional candidates in 2012 for beta testing.

375 Sounds like sabotage man.

376 In re #376, I would work on it in my free time for free because I have a good job....

377 MR Scribbler, let me apologize to you. I saw your posts leading up to the election as unnecessarily negative (not an "eyeore", which in my mind is something else entirely), but you pretty much nailed it.

378

 

naming the organization after a crappy 1970's Jaws knock off  probably didn't help

379 signed up to help never heard back.....signed up to make calls got internal error message that would be fixed....went back a couple of times same message....the only thing that worked was my donations....and i made several donations... i did get thank you emails but America's next gen actually called me today and thanked me for my support

380 Blaming the electorate for Romney's loss gets no sympathy from me.  Dems  dragged into thousands of polling places the homeless, the sick, the lame, the senile, the mentally-challenged (the clinical kind), just about every breathing body that wasn't registered Republican.  Obama's people stuck a sample ballot in every hand and made sure the voters wandered into empty voting booths - and voted "correctly".  By the van and bus loads.

 The Dem operatives did it because their jobs depended on winning.

381 If his last term is any indication, Obama will wait until he's in political trouble again, before starting the real crackdown in CO as a distraction.
--
Why did/would Obama crack down?  I'm surprised he would, as the majority affected are likely his base.

382 Vic agree, no more caucuses

383 i did get thank you emails but America's next gen actually called me today and thanked me for my support

Posted by: phoenixgirl at November 08, 2012 04:49 PM (Ho2rs)

Yes, I got thank you emails from all the candidates win or lose regarding my donations--except Romney.

384 Someone earlier up the thread asked if the people running ORCA may have been donk plants and that it was therefore designed to be a cluster. At this point I see no reason not to take this question seriously. By the way, a couple days before the election I tried to raise concerns about ORCA here but I got shouted down by a bunch of Morons who accused me of being a concern troll. The only upside of this is that I was vindicated. What an awful upside.

385 Prime Minister?

Posted by: Cricket at November 08, 2012 04:41 PM (DrC22)

Project Manager

386 My BFF did ORCA in Alexandria, VA and said it worked great. They got everyone to the poll there. Another friend of mine in Springfield VA has always done his precinct the old fashioned way, had 100% turnout. I doubt this cost us the election.

387 "Blaming the electorate for Romney's loss gets no sympathy from me. Dems dragged into thousands of polling places the homeless, the sick, the lame, the senile, the mentally-challenged (the clinical kind), just about every breathing body that wasn't registered Republican. Obama's people stuck a sample ballot in every hand and made sure the voters wandered into empty voting booths - and voted "correctly". By the van and bus loads. The Dem operatives did it because their jobs depended on winning." Yep, exactly. I understand that most of us here are still in the denial stage, but eventually we have to own up to the fact that the GOP is a beacon of Fail and Romney was a blank shot from the beginning.

388 Does the Libertarian party get credentialed to poll watch and do these strike lists?

389 Hey, I volunteer right here and right now to help make a better system. How do we do that?

390 #206 It's the ego-maniacal GM that says, 'yah, forget what $12 MIL of high-end product marketing research/impact studies say - I KNOW THIS MARKET!'
--
So true!  I've been in marketing research my entire career (20+ years).  Worked on New Coke research after it was introduced (my firm was not involved in research for that product before; we would have caught the mistakes).  I could cite another example of a very well known company that ignored research findings and is all but gone now because of it (confidentiality prevents disclosure)

391 I take it this master plan was implemented two weeks before the election.

392 389 Hey, I volunteer right here and right now to help make a better system. How do we do that?

Posted by: crosspatch at November 08, 2012 04:55 PM (YRCZD)

By hijacking the Libertarian Party's access and building our own redundant operation to run side by side the GOP's ORCA.

393 Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. And they ask me why I fucking drink.

394 #387  I was a Perry supporter until he crashed and burned.  I went to Romney because I knew the others would not have a chance.

This ORCA thing really bothers me.  Who from the Romney campaign bought it?  Did they buy it from Microsoft or was that just an assumption my friend made? I know they explained it to Priebus as some sort of great thing because he was very enthusiastic about the GOTV effort.

Didn't anyone ask for tests and demonstrations?  Was the system compromised?  Who was in charge of contacting volunteers?  Who was in charge of getting those emails sent out?  I myself volunteered and never heard a thing.

Also,  I have a friend who ordered stuff from the Romney store and it took over 2 months to arrive.  She got her shirt about a week before the election.  That is crappy.  So who was in charge of that?

I really want the story on this because if this was a case of hubris or incompetence,  that's one thing.  If there were infiltrators and sabotage,  that's another.  

395 "So what you're saying is, we went into maybe the most important Presidential election of the last 30 years.... with a beta version GOTV, and lost to a guy who got less votes than McCain '08?" Keep perspective. Obama lost a LOT more votes in 2012 relative to 2008 than Mitt did relative to McCain.

396 "By hijacking the Libertarian Party's ..." Screw the Libertarian Party. They elected Obama in 2012.

397 76 What ever happened Romney lost votes in key States and got fewer than idiot McCain. Of course as someone said earlier, Palin may have had something to do with that.


I know I seriously considered not voting in 2008 until Palin got on the ticket.

Posted by: Vic at November 08, 2012 03:54 PM (YdQQY)

 

We don't know that yet. The votes have not all been counted this year. Can't compare incomplete  vote counts to '08, yet.

398 In the future this process will be done by private-drones that hover over registered voters homes, wait for them to leave the house and follow them all day until the reach their polling place.

399 Even if it had worked and Romney had won - still bad. Wasn't enough to defeat Obama - we NEEDED a rejection. Romney needed to win in a LANDSLIDE to provide the mandate for entitlement reform, smaller govt and all that stuff.

400 Yes, I got thank you emails from all the candidates win or lose regarding my donations--except Romney.

Posted by: Sherry McEvil, Wily Wrepublican Wench at November 08, 2012 04:50 PM (kXoT0)

I got thank-yous from Romney, Mandel in Ohio, Brown in Mass., West in Florida and Love in Utah...the other 6 or 7 senate candidates I gave money to? Not a peep.

401 >>Respectfully sir, then get on it. My husband is hearing through the Utah movers and shakers connected to Mitt that the Romney campaign's "guts" if you will, not the public faces like Sununu, were a pretty tight-knit and somewhat insular group. And that seems to fit with what I'm gleaning about the presidential campaign eschewing RNC infrastructure for their own product. So I'm not sure that a better mousetrap would have been accepted/used. I've been lurking and reading a lot today about WHY WE LOST. Some of it I find plausible, some of it I find borderline offensive (the willingness to discount some things as things to negotiate away while others are non-negotiable). You can't really do the experiment multiple times and really know which answer(s) are right. I'm not particularly mad at Romney. He ran hard, made some good choices and some poor ones, but I feel like his choice of Ryan was so good that he's earned some goodwill from me -- even though I did not think it meant he would be as conservative in office as I would have wanted. That said, to my simplistic view if I was going to pick one reason why we lost it's simply because we played into their hands. Last time around we ran a doddering albino against the First Black President (to be). This time, after the country was fed a steady diet of class warfare from Day 1, we ran a multi-millionaire from the right side of the tracks as it were (being a governor/CEO's son). For many many people whether or not he earned that success through hard work or intelligence is less important than that he didn't really (COULDN'T really) "understand" them. It's not Romney's "fault" and undoubtedly he (and Ann) have done and will continue to do a lot of good for disadvantaged people in this country. But that was his Rep going in and he really didn't change that. There are some things he could have tried that might have helped, but it was an uphill battle.

402 Most of that information in those packets does NOT need to change from year to year. Once you get certain things down, such as what to bring to a polling place, that shouldn't have to change from one year to the next.

403 In the future this process will be done by private-drones that hover over registered voters homes, wait for them to leave the house and follow them all day until the reach their polling place.

Posted by: Serious Cat at November 08, 2012 05:01 PM (UypUQ)

And if the drone detects that you have voted for an unacceptable candidate, it will zap you with a Hellfire as you leave the polling station.

404 The system was infiltrated and simple little bugs were put in place.  Who doesn't run a test first using the people that's going to use it?

405 " Who doesn't run a test first using the people that's going to use it?" Incompetent people who are working to a deadline of election day. The deadline should have been set to a month before election day and a few "test runs" made.

406 These are actually very common bugs/oversights that are made on the first deliverable of anything. The problem is that it wasn't delivered until the day before election day so there was no opportunity to correct them.

407 23 Did someone say Boston? The GOP nominated a Massachusetts Republican and a bunch of people stayed home, as Gomer says: SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE Posted by: SpongeBob Saget at November 08, 2012 03:46 PM (SDkq3 I had initially thought Romney was unelectable and it was insane to nominate him, because I felt the Base would not turn out for him and Independents would be jealous of his wealth. But polls consistently indicated that he had grown on the Base by election day, and w/ people in general (he had a better favorable/unfavorable than O by the end). Not just anecdotal evidence, but polling showed that people had become excited to vote for Romney, not just against Obama. I think what we read in this diary sounds like a better explanation for the lack of turnout than Romney's liberalism.

408 "Yes, I got thank you emails from all the candidates win or lose regarding my donations--except Romney." I call bull. I got thank-yous from Romney for donations. And from Ann and from Paul Ryan.

409 >>>Blaming the electorate for Romney's loss gets no sympathy from me.

Really? So it's not only our responsibility to convince them to vote for us, but we have to ensure they do it or it's 100% on us? Screw that noise, I'll buy a 1-2% push in what should be a close race. But this race? No combination of circumstantial factors make it acceptable that more people in this country pulled the lever for Obama than Romney, that is a people that deserve a tyrant, that deserve chains, that deserve every inch of what is going to F* them in the next 10 years. They are the lukewarm and they are about to be spit out.

This is my going forward thinking. If you didn't vote (barring some extreme unforseen couldn't make it to the polls circumstance) for Romney, F* you. You willingly participated in the destruction of your country.

410

Posted by: Prescient11 at November 08, 2012 04:00 PM (tVTLU)

 

In an election like this 300,000 votes is paltry, we were supposed to win much bigger.

 

I'm digesting ORCA's clusterfark, but I'm still going with voter fraud, esp. with what I'm reading from Ulsterman's Insider and the comments there (Insider himself has admitted to  cheating elections and he smells a major rat).

411 They assured us that the system had been relentlessly tested and would be a tremendous success.

OS/2 2.0 GA

It wasn't until Warp,  which came after 2.0 SP, 2.1, and 2.11, that the promise was eventually delivered on.

What happened here sounds very typical of a developer driven effort with little actual testing.  Something of this magnitude would need 6 months of testing minimum, with a test staff of at least 50 to ensure success...

...documentation and usability needs to be "tested" too on green walkins off the street - people who have never heard of the thing.

412 John E was absolutely right about ORCA.  It was a FOCA (Spanish slang for a beached whale). At the Old Dominion War Room, the computers were down, so we had to write up electioneering problems by hand.  We got ORCA calls and could do nothing.

There may be many other problems diagnosed in an election post-mortum for Romney, but Ace of Spades has the finger of truth on the massive fail of ORCA

413 I got thank yous - and many phone calls - from Romney after my donation. Of the candidates I gave to this cycle, they all did pretty well except for Dan Liljenquist, the guy running against Orrin in the primary. I think he didn't have much of a campaign infrastructure in place. Orrin was going throughout the state strong-arming people not to work for Dan. BTW, a big F-U to the meddling non-Utah pundit types who backed Orrin in the primary on the grounds of him chairing that finance committee. Michelle Malkin was one of the few to back Dan and she earned my respect for that.

414 Just a thought, but if the electorate had a fucking clue and was paying attention, we wouldn't need all these absurd measures to drag people kicking and screaming to the polls.

415 After Romney won the nomination, I noticed a few signs of what I call "minor league campigning" and these didn't stop as the campaign progressed.  It's as if he hired amateurs instead of professionals.

416 415 After Romney won the nomination, I noticed a few signs of what I call "minor league campigning" ---- That's what you get when you run someone who has won 1 campaign. I will be disappointed (and mad) if it turns out to be true that the RNC had a plan/system available that Team Romney didn't use.

417

Flabbergasted to see people arguing that it doesn't matter.  It's an election, you win with votes  Not ideas, not advertising, not anything but VOTES.  The gotv effort is the most fundamental aspect of the campaign, where the rubber meets the road.  It's the only tangible thing in the process that directly impacts the outcome for goodness sakes.

Would be great if 51% of the population were motivated, hardcore conservatives like us, but they aren't.  They aren't on the other side either, but they are kicking our butt on targeting the actual people and getting the actual votes on election day (and before).

After all this mental masturbation the last 2 days about messaging, philosophy, demographics, here is one where there's no discussion or debate necessary.  We will improve our chances to win by simply getting better at targeting and gotv.  They are better at it than we are. This is the first place we should start.

And thanks for sharing your experience. Hopefully someone in the organization reads it.

418 >>>but they aren't.

F* 'em then. Their freedom is no longer any of my concern.

419

Glad it wasn't just me that had trouble.  I signed up to help with Project ORCA in August.  Did the online certification, waited for my packet to come in the mail.  Never received anything just e-mails about training calls at times I was never able to attend.  Received a call Thursday before the election from a local person who had a list she received from Boston.  They had placed me to watch the polls in a little tiny town 50 miles from where I live (guess in Boston they don't realize that these big states out west have big counties).  I said no, I didn't have time to add an hour each way to the time I had to volunteer.  She said maybe they could use me in another town about 15 minutes away.  I said great.  She said she would call when my credentials and packet were ready to be picked up from headquarters.  Never heard back - went down on Monday to check.  Nope, they had all the poll watchers they needed, but would call if something came up.  I could help make phone calls if I wanted to.  Personally I was so annoyed with all the calls I had been receiving didn't want to bother anyone else with phone calls so didn't go back.  Tried to connect to the last conference call Monday night to listen to the 2 special guests - just kept getting system busy tone and never could connect. 

Especially given the outcome was very disappointed this system didn't work.  It seemed like such a great, efficient tool - using people with smart phones to track votes, unfortunately, it obviously didn't work.  Wonder how much money was spent on a system that didn't work - guessing if you could follow the money you might be surprised who benefited the most. 

420 >>The gotv effort is the most fundamental aspect of the campaign, where the rubber meets the road. After the convention when Romney was still being outspent by Obama on commercials some of us asked why he wasn't spending. I recall being told that GOTV was very expensive so he was saving resources for that. I would like to know who got the contract for ORCA and how much they got paid. I DEMAND to know that before I give to the GOP/RNC again.

421 So how does one go about closing a community organizing gap that exists versus the country's professional union and community organizers?

A bracero program for community organizers?

422 I think the real problem with ORCA was that they had Ace programming the HTML.

423 Heads should roll for this.



Unfortunately they probably will. Only it will be our heads, and the heads of our children.

424 This was on the Romney campaign end of things, right?  Not the RNC side?

425 >> I will be disappointed (and mad) if it turns out to be true that the RNC had a plan/system available that Team Romney didn't use.

It's twue, it's twue.

426 I'll keep linking to what I posted mid-election day here as long as you keep posting about the ORCA disaster: http://minx.cc/?blog=86&post=334705#c19619189 "Any other dopes that did the RR Project Orca fiasco? The smartphone link never worked for users in PA and who know where else. Now I have to manually enter all votes by touch tone phone? What is this... 1984? The Dem poll watcher was laughing at me...what an embarrasment...." I did finally have someone from ORCA call me Jokinly tell me thanks for the help buy we weren't going to win PA.... I also heard from someone in the PA GOP that the ORCA voter information was never used. I think I'll step away from politics for a while....

427 This-
80 I'm like a broken record, but it shouldn't have mattered. Not this time in this election. Not with this guy. We should have been able to run a damn martian and won. People shouldn't have needed to have been told to, you know, vote. Country is lost not because of poor GOTV efforts, but because the electorate is stupid as fuck.

is correct.

428

ORCA smells like "saboteur", but I don't think we lost because of it.  We had the enthusiasm naturally, without call lists. I've never once been called on election day to GOTV, and yet, I  go to the polls with bells on every cycle.  Let me repeat: we had  so much enhusiasm  we  should've won  this without "strike-lists". Which leads me back to fraud.

429 >> This was on the Romney campaign end of things, right? Not the RNC side?

The RNC had a system (no word on whether it was any good or not - we'll likely never know). Team Romney bigfooted them.

This is all on Team Romney.

430

I did it.  It was kinda fucked up but it worked.  My little precinct went from something like 80% turnout in 08 to around 81% in 12.

I am in Pennsylvania so it didn't matter.

431 The RNC had a system (no word on whether it was any good or not - we'll likely never know). Team Romney bigfooted them.

This is all on Team Romney.

Posted by: Andy at November 08, 2012 05:25 PM (5Rurq)

---------

If it's the same system Reince used here in Wisconsin, it worked pretty well.

432 By the way- this should amuse all- the Romney tshirts and bumper stickers I ordered a month and a half go were finally sent- on election day.  They will arrive at the house soon.

433

By the way, I happen to be President of Council of my little borough.  We have a total of 310 registered voters in my entire borough.  I am up for re-election next year.

I got to see all of my constituents.  All of the ones that vote at least.

434 Sorry to hear that, Timwi.  Not to rub salt in your wounds but I could have had Tshirts and bumper stickers to you inside of 5 days.  With a 30 day refund policy in case we lost.  Which we did. Which now that I say it out loud just sounds like more salt in the wound.

Sorry.

435 This is all on Team Romney. Posted by: Andy at November 08, 2012 05:25 PM --- OK, then I can go back to my natural state of not liking Romney. Seriously, though, I would hope the Daily Caller who was eager to do exposes of RNC spending way back when, do some digging and tell us who was in charge of this crap sandwich so we can make sure he (or she) never works again.

436

Another thing, the GOP obsession w/ tv ads defies explanation.  SuperPACs could have spent another $100 million this month on ads for Romney and the outcome would have been the same.  The ones that are effective are targeted and saying something that stands out or that people don't know aobut.  For example, those dumb Obama ads on Romney's tax returns and private equity experience really helped him, b/c the average person didn't know Romney yet and b/c Romney wasn't on the air himself during that time.  Or like radio ads targeting specific groups like w/ Obama to women on contraception.  I mean, think how devestating radio ads on spanish channels could have been telling people the Catholic church was actually suing Obama.  Or ads in blue collar white areas in Ohio about how Obamacare was leading full time jobs to become part time.  TV ads are expensive and have to address big, broad subjects, while they kick our butts on the small things.  The small things are perfect for radio and direct mail, and since they're cheaper you can target exactly the group you want with an ad that matters to them and might actually change a mind.

And if someone had a SuperPAC to develop innovative gotv systems and databases for targeting, I'd invest in that, as it woul dactually be a competitive advantage, not another ad on tv.  The value of TV ads is long since passed, they don't really work, the return on investment on them has become very small relative to the cost.

437 Did anyone see the Althouse article where she described receiving an email solicitation from Obama that would give the Obama people access to all the info on her facebook page? The Obama people were targeting this time, and it looks like next time the DNC are going to have all the info they need to design their election message on an even more specific level.

438 410 I'm digesting ORCA's clusterfark, but I'm still going with voter fraud, esp. with what I'm reading from Ulsterman's Insider and the comments there (Insider himself has admitted to cheating elections and he smells a major rat).

Posted by: Aslan's Girl at November 08, 2012 05:08 PM (KL49F)

--

Glad to see I'm not the only one questioning the possibility of major or systematic fraud.  With the reports about the military votes, machines flipping votes from R to O, Philly poll watchers getting kicked out and just flat out low numbers compared to everything pointing to a high turnout, I can't believe there aren't more people asking questions. 

I wish Romney hadn't conceded so fast, would have waited until all issues could be identified and investigated.  Check to make sure there weren't lots of dead, illegal or felons voting.  Conduct research among non-voters to be sure they in fact did not vote.  I hope work is being done to ensure the election wasn't stolen, and to take steps if there is any doubt.  I'll go read Ulsterman now too, thanks for the tip.

439 "a nationally-scalable management consulting platform to fully realize and leverage full-resource realization of electoral enterprise exploitation. Fully."

House of Lies

440 If the pubs have no ground game (which it certainly sounds like we dont) then we should get early voting in every state in the union. That would give us more time to get our base to vote, and yes lets cannabalize the base to make sure that we get weveryone to vote. Its BS 'we only focused on low propensity voters early'. How much of our base did we leave on the table in this election?

441 People shouldn't have needed to have been told to, you know, vote. Country is lost not because of poor GOTV efforts, but because the electorate is stupid as fuck... Posted by: Rich at November 08, 2012 03:55 PM (arczc) EXACTLY. The only thing worse than the GOP GOTV effort is the fact that we need a GOTV effort in America.

442 Oh, and they're better at the targeting too.  There was an ad from some leftist site (Slate maybe?) a few weeks ago about our operation on targeting.  Quoted our guys with their great system w/ the Dems laughing, saying the technology was advanced.....5 years ago.  Dismissed it due to the source, but there is probably something to it.

443 I too signed up on their website even though I'm in WA state.  Never heard a thing back.  I would have called from home if I could have.  WA state is now all vote by mail, so there are no poll watchers, but I did it in 2010 and went over the strike lists and called people, so I know how it works.  ORCA didn't work.

444 "437 Did anyone see the Althouse article where she described receiving an email solicitation from Obama that would give the Obama people access to all the info on her facebook page? The Obama people were targeting this time, and it looks like next time the DNC are going to have all the info they need to design their election message on an even more specific level."

they already have it and used it for 2012 - successfully it turns out; micro tagetting, based on profile, etc. - part of project narwhal

445

"80
I'm like a broken record, but it shouldn't have mattered. Not this time
in this election. Not with this guy. We should have been able to run a
damn martian and won. People shouldn't have needed to have been told to,
you know, vote. Country is lost not because of poor GOTV efforts, but
because the electorate is stupid as fuck."

 

100% correct, don't disagree. But we didn't win.  And we lost Senate seats in Montana and North Dakota too for goodness sakes.  A lot of things shouldn't matter, but there's still no excuse for being worse them than at anything in the process.  We are behind them here, so it should get fixed b/c the point is winning, the electorate and their stupidity is what it is.  If only they had to live with the consequences, I'd say #### it, but we have to live with it too.  So in addition to all the discussion about how we have to get more people to agree w/ us, let's first do the easiest thing and match or exceed the Dems in gotv.

446 So, did the people who set this up get paid?  Of course they did.  That's all they cared about.

It's that way at all levels of government and corporate.  Come up with some grand scheme that everybody around the conference table signs off on and then implement it.

Whether or not it worked - or won the election - was immaterial.

447 Again,  obama spent quality time with facebook and google CEOs for a reason. they built him a system to help win.

448 Over the weekend I wanted to volunteer. I went to Mitt's web site and clicked "Volunteer". Totally useless, just generic bullshit about where to register to vote in my state and a link to my state's election's web site. Uhm, yeah thanks for that info I never would have thought to check there first.  Not to metion this is 4 days before the election when the registration deadline had long passed in my state. Oh and of course front and center there was the DONATE button, even though just a couple of days earlier I read the campaign had more money than it knew what to do with.

So I finally stumbled on the call from home app. Damn thing crashed on me twice before it finally started working. I started making calls. The script was awful. It was a poll on who are you going to vote for. WTF? You're calling Republican likely voters and that's what you want to know, who are you likely to vote for...again 4 days before the election? The script should be Hi this is John calling to remind you to vote. Do you need a ride to the polls? None of this hi this is John and I'm doing a quick survey about the election. Last thing anyone in Ohio or Iowa wants is another polling company calling.

And here's the best part...before doing all this, on Friday I sent an email to the campaign saying basically I live in this city, my state is solid blue but I want to help out in other ways. Here's my phone number, here's my email address. Get in touch with me. I still have yet to get a reply to that email.

Absolutely pathetic GOTV operation all around. This is why IMO Obama won. He used Faceboo, Twitter to perfection. He used data mining to find out to the street level who voted and got someone out there to drag them kicking and screaming to the polls. They did early voting campaigns, again micro targeted at the people they knew would be too lazy to get to the polls on election day.

What do we do? Not even answer an email from someone asking to volunteer.

Pathetic. Just fucking pathetic.

And the even more pathetic thing is in 2016 it will be the same thing.

449 They didn't use Star Kahn Prince's system... is this right??? I thought the model was to nationalize the Wisconsin system... or better yet apply it to individual states

450 The battle ground of Eastern Iowa -- same EXACT thing.   So bad the Scott County brass called off all poll counting 4pm Monday and asked poll counters to just show up to watch for problems.   This race was very tight and was critically important not just for Romney but for a very promising and energetic House candidate John Archer.

I called and emailed the ORCA people several times.  The 'Command Center' phone line said on Monday night:  "Call back at 5 am when we open. Click".  Called at 7 am, couldn't 'log in'.  Told to call back every 10 minutes.  Really?   Tried once per hour until 6 pm-- FAIL.  EPIC FAIL.   

Here's the official message from the republican HQ battleground district of Eastern or Scott County Iowa:

"The ORCA voter turn-out program will not be available for tomorrow's election. We will not be receiving voter lists. There is a possibility that some volunteers will receive an app for their smart phone and they will be able to report voter tunr-out. The important resposibility for all volunteers will be to WATCH and assure the credibility of the voting process. It is critical that we have a presence at every polling location while the polls are open. Thank you for your patience and your paticipation!"These ORCA folks were like Baghdad Bob :  IT's all good!  We have good information coming, call in 10 minutes, get to the polls at 6:45 am, here's your packet at 9pm the evening before via email, print out 30 pages,  nevermind you've been doing this for 30 years and there are three hour shifts in every precinct, go all day, nevermind you can't use cell phones in the polling places.  Just no clue about how things are done, no training, nothing.

Epic fail and it didn't just hurt Romney, it's why we lost ground in the house and Senate as well.   Notice it happened in Ohio too.   Iowa, Ohio, Virginia... noticing a trend  ANYONE?   HELLO?

451 In North Carolina, you can't just be a poll watcher for a candidate. There are provisions in place for two watchers from each political party, and they have to go through a special training session that was only held twice, at least in my county.
My county GOP chairman emailed me the above information. On Monday. Because he had suddenly gotten word of some secret Project ORCA, didn't know what the hell it was but wanted to inform those of us who intended to participate that we wouldn't be permitted in the polling place.
Strangely, it's good to know that I wasn't the only one who got caught up in this "great idea".

452 I worked in FL poll ORCA. Though I received cert I was hassled by the poll clerk AND the election supervisor (Elected Dem) called to make me leave. I worked 11 hrs with a 2 hr trip to the poll. Nothing promised about project was provided.. My transmission was via cell call and inputting it manually. It was a NIGHTMARE! As planned 1 person could realistically capture 500 of the expected 1100 voters.

453 So awesome.

454 OK, I'm way late to the thread, and I posted this last night in a previous thread, but here's why Mitt lost, accounting for those 3 million 'missing' votes:

The campaign made a strategic decision earlier on (like back in the summer) that they were going to go after the independents in certain counties
in the key swing states, specifically Ohio and Virginia. Like, they
spent ALL the money in the 4 Northern Virginia counties up until only 6
weeks ago, when they realized that after looking at the data, they had
to get the base to turn out, and then decided to spend money in the red
Virginia counties. Nor did campaign state hq actually have registered
republican voter canvassing lists, or phone lists ready to go AND they
did not want to issue them to the precinct captains who wanted to turn
out their areas. They eventually relented, after heated words and
emergency meetings.

One PC decided to disobey campaign orders
and worked his district and guess what? Second highest turnout of all
state precincts and his precinct managed to go from 53% turnout to
nearly 69% GOP (87% all registered voters). This precinct captain has
now been offered a job at the state level GOP.

Not to malign
Romney personally, because he is a plainly decent guy whom I believe
truly loves this country, but sometimes it boils down to decisions at
these levels, which was replayed in Ohio, too.

Oh, and PA was a
ruse. It was a head fake to get the dems to spend money there. PA was
never in play. A good idea, and it had the left panicked about it.

455 442 Oh, and they're better at the targeting too. There was an ad from some leftist site (Slate maybe?) a few weeks ago about our operation on targeting. Quoted our guys with their great system w/ the Dems laughing, saying the technology was advanced.....5 years ago. Dismissed it due to the source, but there is probably something to it.

"In 2008, the Obama campaign ran a poll-watching project called Project Houdini. Trevelyan said that the system was powered by an interactive voice response system made by another vendor that melted down under the load and was rendered unusable."

456 This is the first report of any kind I have seen addressing Project ORCA and a good description of what I experienced trying to implement this program at my western Fairfax Co., Va. polling site. 

I never received official credentials before I arrived at 5:45am, was turned away at the polling site, and had to call Richmond GOP HQ to have then email me a blank PDF of my credentials--and did not receive it until two hours of voting had passed, and 798 people had already voted.  The ORCA helpline was never answered any time during the day--who could blame them for ignoring it? 

And of course, I never was able to access the Website at all--and until I read this article had no idea it was the "s" in https: that was causing my smartphone to fail to connect.  The paper backup ballot was not much help with almost 20% of the voters casting ballots by the time I arrived back at the polling station at 8:30am and was legally allowed to observe.

Unmitagated disaster is exactly what this lousy ORCA project was.  The two other Romney pollwatchers and I gave up at about 3pm when nothing was working, and over 50% of the polling district had voted.  I would not be a bit surprised if this software disaster cost Romney the election in Virginia. 

I wouldn't pay the programmers a dime.

457 This is the system the Ds used this year:

"Instead of just being limited to being used by volunteers watching the polls for the presidential campaign, NGP VAN's smartphone reporting tool is likely to be used by volunteers on a large number of Democratic campaigns from President Obama's re-election effort on down, meaning that there should be more people updating the database of people who have voted. The system is designed to update the central database every time that the end-user enters the names of five additional voters.

The feature enables campaign volunteers with smartphones trained as pollwatchers to log into a mobile-optimized web site, and to check off in near real-time the names of voters who show up at their polling places. But instead of checking off names, the volunteers will be punching in five-digit codes representing the voters. The idea is that monitoring turnout will enable the campaigns to more efficiently manage their GOTV efforts and stop pestering people who have already voted."

458 One PC decided to disobey campaign orders

and worked his district and guess what? Second highest turnout of all

state precincts and his precinct managed to go from 53% turnout to

nearly 69% GOP (87% all registered voters). This precinct captain has

now been offered a job at the state level GOP.

--------------------------------------




Unbelievable.

459 458 Unbelievable that he disobeyed the campaign or unbelievable that he had to?

460 unbelievable that he had to?

---------------

This.... that the campaign was so inept that he had to go against orders, and that in doing so he got out the vote better than anyone else.  It appears the Romney campaign tried to fix something that wasn't broken and royally screwed that up too.

461 John, I worked Project ORCA as well and it was very hard to do right, but that's how we improve it for next time. However, I listened to the training and read the emails. They told us to make sure we had our credentials and if we didn't, to contact our local elections officer...at least that's what I got. It could have been done better, but the coordination was lacking.

462 As one of the 800 or so volunteers at ORCA HQ, I can confirm what a staggering failure this was. From Start to Finish. We were originally asked to be there at 5:15am, then at the Monday night training Dan said he wanted us up an running at 5:15. I headed out and arrived home in Douglas, MA at 10 and went to bed, setting my alarm for 2:50. Out the door quickly and arrived in Boston at 4:15, to be greeted by a traffic jam of eager voluteers with Mitt and Scot Brown Stickers on their cars all waiting to be let in...THE GARAGE DOOR WAS CLOSED. We sat outside for about 45 minutes. No Joke. Inside, I was assigned to the North Carolina Pod. We got set up and nobody knew how to get online or what passwords were. Phones kept dying and the net went down a few times. Made some morning calls to our poll watchers in NC and reached maybe 1 out of every 15-20 live. Turns out many watcher got the info monday night and had been assigned to polls 2 hours away and were unwilling or unable to make the trip so they just passed. Many of those who did get out were greeted by Poll workers who booted them due to lack of credentials. As for the phone calls going unanswered, as soon as the phone rang in our pod we picked up right away, almost having to have your hand on the phone to get the call, otherwise someone beat you to it. As the day wore on and the NC dashboard remained empty, some of us got the impression things were not working, and this was confirmed by calls from people unable to log on to the web app. Our pod chief assured us that the system was working flawlessly for the majority of pollwatchers, and we were just getting calls from people having problems, but like I said, we sat the whole day and not a single status came up on the dashboard. About 1:30 they figured out the wrong passwords were sent out to the ENTIRE list of NC poll watchers, so we were each given a list to call with new passwords. I could hear the older gentleman next to me give incorrect instructions to at least 4-5 different people, despite my attempts to correct him (No, the new password is the precinct number, NOT the precinct number and last name!) By the time they figured. Communication to us minions was very poor throughout the day and many of us were given the impression that the system was working great for every state except ours. In the end most of us knew we hadn't made a bit of difference but we stayed to watch the results after the phone calls stopped coming in. We saw the numbers slipping away and when Pennsylvania was called so quickly I knew it was the end, tho I stayed until Ohio was called on the jumbotron. Felt used. Burned. Project ORCA ended up with a harpoon in its side and washed up on shore, lifeless. We were told we were the tip of the spear. We felt like we were the butt of the joke.

463 Here on the Politico website is a chronicle of the failure in Ohio

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83439.html

You see, it wasn't all about Romney.   There were tight house and senate races and local state house races where 'get out the vote' efforts make a HUGE difference.   The ORCA system washed out all of that in favor of 'their way'.  Most of us have been doing this for a decade or more.  The Romney people led our people to 'trust them' and now not only is Mitt out, so our many of our people who could have made it.

Where were the adults a week out who should have noticed is wasn't ready for prime time, and told all the people in the field to rev-up and print out the voter lists and do it as we've known how these many years?

464 460 Ah, yeah.  Pretty sad. 

465 Anyone who gives ORCA 'a next time' deserves to lose.  Fool us once, shame on you.  Fool us twice-- seriously.   The centralized system is a very, very bad idea.  ORCA proved that.

466 I voted in Virginia around 9:30 in the morning and asked the folks handing out sample ballots about ORCA. Same story - the woman with the cell phone couldn't access the site and had been calling the help "hotline" for hours without being able to reach anybody. She mentioned that she hadn't been "let in" to the polling place to be a poll watcher.

467 Actually, John. I should have read all the way through. you pretty much nailed it. I don't, however, think you give up on it. I think you get some experts in project management involved and take the lessons learned and possibly make it useful. You're right about the volunteers. Depressing.

468 For the record, I was an ORCA poll watcher, and my experience mirrors NONE of this. At any point. 1) I also got my packet late Sunday, but I was anticipating it to be a PDF, since they had said that the one conference all I was on. 2) I received my credentials as a separate email about 10 minutes later. 3) when I had questions, I emailed the national director of the project, and both he and the state coordinator got back to me by email by Monday night. 4) When I arrived at the polling place only 5 minutes early, the poll director was expecting me, as were several workers. 5) Despite the posted law, I was specifically allowed to use my iPad and/or iPhone inside. 6) After some initial discomfort, the poll worked and I got along well. 7) A voter actually challenged my presence in the polling place, going so far as to demand to see me credentials. The poll workers (one of whom is a sitting Federal judge) went out of their way to defend my presence. He evidently also called the county election authority after leaving to complain and was given the stiff arm as well. the web app worked flawlessly for me, and I never had more than a 2 second lag all day long. 9) I received two calls during the Election Day to see if I was up and running. 10) we still fucking lost. Now, a few things. I live in Ohio, so we may have gone to the head of the line in support. Delaware county is red (though the poll workers were bipartisan of course) and has an extremely professional crew to run elections. I do thiknk it was too physically demanding a job for an elderly volunteer. I had three widely spaced tables to cover, and only commitment, and luck let me get most everybody. Lastly, the most important element of the thing was that little yellow button, I was explaining it to one of the poll workers who has done duty in the past in inner city Columbus as a poll watcher. She nearly swooned over the button and its implications. In the bad precincts, a poll watcher can do nothing, as we hear, and risks getting thrown out if they object to multiple voting, as she had seen many times before. An anonymous call to lawyers without tipping off what they are doing and antagonizing the poll workers would be priceless. In all, I can see how it would have had big problems. But I did not see all the problems others did. Bt we need tech like this for next time, but we might be better off to focus the tool on precincts that aren't ours. Focus it on vote integrity, rather than turnout.

469 Heads up that Libtards are salivating over your account and this link is burning up the twittersphere. This doesn't change the fact that there are many accounts coming to light of rampant #voterfraud. Plus it looks like moonbats infiltrated Orca. "Dace Branson ‏@DaceBranson @anamariecox it was fun being a dem, and a orca helper! Lol congrats Obama!"

470 Wingnut tears comedy gold!!!!!

How you doing with that epic butthurt?

471 And THIS is the monumental fuck-up you wanted to put in charge of the nation? Tell me again who really screwed up here, the campaign or the fools that bought their message.

472 3 "... we went into maybe the most important Presidential election of the last 30 years.... with a beta version GOTV, and lost to a guy who got less votes than McCain '08?" No, Obama 2012 got MORE votes than McCain 2008 ... quite a lot more. On the other hand Romney didn't really do any better than McCain did in terms of votes. Maybe you were put off track a bit by the fact that votes in some places are still coming in. For example, Obama just took Florida.

473 I signed up and someone called me to schedule. We set it up and when she was getting ready to hang up, I asked if I needed credentials. That was when she told me that I needed to go the the Victory Office. If I would not have asked, I would have been in the same boat as you. The night before I got an email with the packet but it said that I was not needed. Kind of weird.

474 "For the record, I was an ORCA poll watcher, and my experience mirrors NONE of this. At any point. 1) I also got my packet late Sunday, but I was anticipating it to be a PDF, since they had said that the one conference all I was on. 2) I received my credentials as a separate email about 10 minutes later. 3) when I had questions, I emailed the national director of the project, and both he and the state coordinator got back to me by email by Monday night. 4) When I arrived at the polling place only 5 minutes early, the poll director was expecting me, as were several workers. 5) Despite the posted law, I was specifically allowed to use my iPad and/or iPhone inside. 6) After some initial discomfort, the poll worked and I got along well. 7) A voter actually challenged my presence in the polling place, going so far as to demand to see me credentials. The poll workers (one of whom is a sitting Federal judge) went out of their way to defend my presence. He evidently also called the county election authority after leaving to complain and was given the stiff arm as well. the web app worked flawlessly for me, and I never had more than a 2 second lag all day long. 9) I received two calls during the Election Day to see if I was up and running. 10) we still fucking lost. Now, a few things. I live in Ohio, so we may have gone to the head of the line in support. Delaware county is red (though the poll workers were bipartisan of course) and has an extremely professional crew to run elections. I do thiknk it was too physically demanding a job for an elderly volunteer. I had three widely spaced tables to cover, and only commitment, and luck let me get most everybody. Lastly, the most important element of the thing was that little yellow button, I was explaining it to one of the poll workers who has done duty in the past in inner city Columbus as a poll watcher. She nearly swooned over the button and its implications. In the bad precincts, a poll watcher can do nothing, as we hear, and risks getting thrown out if they object to multiple voting, as she had seen many times before. An anonymous call to lawyers without tipping off what they are doing and antagonizing the poll workers would be priceless. In all, I can see how it would have had big problems. But I did not see all the problems others did. Bt we need tech like this for next time, but we might be better off to focus the tool on precincts that aren't ours. Focus it on vote integrity, rather than turnout." RE:468 I worked at my precinct in SE Virginia and I had a similarly positive experience. I could not get the program to work in the morning, but it was only because my reception was HORRIBLE inside the school. I had to manually enter quite a few voters and unfortunately I had to go outside to do it. There were 2 others with me, with only one using the smartphone program (I don’t call it an app). She had no issues at all. She got 2 calls from HQ and I got one, although the call dropped before I could even finish saying “hello” (recall shitty reception) One of the dem watchers said he was turning green with envy watching us. I thought it was really funny and judging by turnout at my precinct (which went 67% Romney), I thought it was a great day. I left at 5 PM only because I was just completely exhausted because the long line never stopped all day (which the poll workers said they’d never seen before, even in 200 . The worst part was I have no evidence if any of the data actually made it to HQ in Boston. And then we fucking lost, so needless to say I considered it a wasted day and evening.

475 well, one of the chairs had to be empty of course.

476 Well then, guess it's a good thing they didn't win. Can you imagine running the whole country with that level of incompetence?

477 I never received my packet. I also signed up for Lawyers for Romney and never heard back. We need to better organized if we plan on taking this country back.

478 The mistake was thinking that Romney was for small government. Was he for small government when he sucked on the federal government to pay for the Olympics? Or when he did the same to get Bain bailed out in its early days? Or when he made money off of a federal auto bailout with Delphi?

479 I used Orca as a poll watcher in Las Vegas. I got my packet in time, but noticed I couldn't log-in/test out the website prior to Election Day. Problems I experienced: -My location and voter lists didn't load. I called their Boston HQ about 15 min before the polls opened. They said they would get back to me. To their credit, they did call back within an hour, and my location/lists started loading. -The voter lists took FOREVER to scroll through. At regular updates when the precinct officials post the voter rolls, we had an avg of 200 voters to mark off. It took me 20 min to do this by hand with hardcopy lists. When I used Orca, there is no quick function to sort through names, say, by typing in the first letter of a voters last name. You have to hit arrow keys to thumb through pages. It took me AN HOUR sitting in my car (they don't allow cell phones in our polling place) to mark everyone off. That took me out of watching what was going on. -The app crashed on me a few times. That means I had to start over at the beginning of the voter list, and thumb throw the list which took 10 minutes for example, if I left off at names beginning with H. The search function by voter name did not work. Since I'm on PST, I pretty much knew the outcome of the election by the time the polls closed, since many of the swing states started being called for Obama. The Obama poll workers opened up their Ipads so we could watch the results (incidentally, we were all very nice and civil to each other). I noticed they didn't have to mark down anyone's name--they just would see periodically how many people voted. Guess Obama had Harry Reid's ground game he could count on. I didn't bother sending Boston the last update.

480 Also, maybe it's because I live in a swing state (NV), but the Romney camp did have roving lawyers that showed up periodically throughout the day. Nevada is also a no-ID state, and has 2 weeks of early voting. The polls were BUSIER during early voting than election day, and early voting can be done ANYWHERE here, not in your precinct. Incidentally, has anyone noticed than Obama won in all states where no photo ID was required? Just sayin' Also, the voting machine technicians in Clark County (where 75% of the vote is) are all SEIU reps. One other poll worker told me when I arrived to replace her (during early voting) that 3 voters came up to her to complain the machines kept registering their Romney choice as Obama.

481 Someone needs to send a copy of this thread to the RNC

482 Gen Woolworth in the thread below asks how can Obama win coal country PA?!?!?

Easy.

Mitt Romney never drove home the point to those idiots that Obama hates coal.

If Mitt Romney did his job, the coal industry workers would've been shitting their pants at the prospect of another 4 years of Obama.
-----------------------------
If they don't know it by now, they don't want to know or they don't care. You can't fix stupid.

483 We need to better organized if we plan on taking this country back.
---------------

Hate to break it to you, but there is no taking it back at this point. Haven't you been paying attention the past few days? The republicans can't wait to hand the country over to the Hispanic lobby, and when that happens, we will never win another election again. Well, maybe we will if we out lib the libs, but that ain't taking the country back.

484 So far, 2012 (Google Elections):

Barack Obama
50.5%     61,062,730 EV 303
   
Mitt Romney
48.0%     58,073,013 EV 206
_________
2008 (Wikipedia)

Barack Obama        
52.93%     69,498,215  EV 365
   
John McCain    
45.66%     59,948,240     EV 173

485 Hilarious - It's as if the fact that printing in black/white if your magenta is all gone is some sort of liberal conspiracy! (go ahead, don't buy an HP, even if Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are your heroes.) Now please explain to me how competence is something we should expect from Republicans, NOT Democrats. You have to love how the author "takes responsibility"!!

486

several comments:

 

Willful, arrogant, self-important, and technology-obsessed.  Oh, and a bad case of Not Invented Here.  Sounds like the typical consultant.

 

Evidently we had to buy it to find out if it would work.  (h/t Nancy Pelosi about the Unaffordable Care Act.)

 

I've always believed we were the practical, down to earth, party.  The one that could get things done.

 

Heartsick - for all the good people who put their faith in this, and for our beloved country.

 

487 Not sure if this has been posted Adviser: Romney "shellshocked" by loss http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/?tag=socsh

488 Axiom:
Technology isn't the nutcracker it's cracked up to be.

489 @488

... It still takes meatspace to make it work.

490 What's needed is a locally managed and operated decentralized system where the computers that actually 'do the work' are not 'in the cloud' but instead 'in each local building'.  Computers that can report 'up' in realtime but-- are not allowed to be the horrific single point of failure ORCA was.

I'm still so amazed that a week out the adults in the Republican establishment couldn't see this disaster in the making, rightly assess the tragedy it would impose on local candidates as well as state and congressional, and downsize it.   Who was drinking all this technology koolaid?

491 Don't kid yourself. They did not pay off blacks in 2008 or 2012. I was a election worker in a nearby precinct in 2008 and 2012. 80% of the voters were registered blacks and a small number of other minority groups (dot-Indians, Asians). Whites were about 20%. These minorities were motivated by long term freebies and voting for the tribe, not short term smokes or walking around money. In 2008 and 2012 they were lined up an hour before the polls opened. Whites didn't show up. In the early evening one white guy (a presumed republican) asked me about turnout and I told him that it was gang-busters especially in the morning. I didn't have the heart (nor was I able to tell him) to tell him it was 80% minority Obama voters. The demographics of this precinct have changed over the years (way more minorities) but whites are still the overwhelming majority. I'm sure there were more whites that voted absentee but I wouldn't know those stats. It was clear by the final tally that the Romney/Obama vote broke down by racial lines. 80%-Obama 20%-Romney 80%-Blacks/other minorities 20%-Whites Republicans will NEVER get the minority vote. You will never overcome the revenge, freebie, tribal vote. Get over it. It's the truth. You need to get white voters to vote in their self interest.

492 They named it ORCA??? 

You're gonna need a bigger vote.

493

I was an ORCA in Jax Fl. My training experiences closely track the author's. Got to my precinct, got my first 25 pins to text. Entered about 20 and the call went dead. I reconnected and a recording saying that I had input 3.

None of the help numbers ever answered. I finally contacted local GOP who told me the that the project had crashed. This was the first tickle in my throat that sickness was upon us.

My life experiences have taught me that when a huge event or project goes wrong and or makes no sense from the level of effort involved, look to what it is  a cover for.

Hunkering down in Duval.

494 You know when Romney seemed most real? The outtakes of him talking bout dressage. I'm not kidding. He was talking, either waiting for an interview to begin, or during  commercial. He seemed real then. ah - it was with Hannity here it is http://tinyurl.com/axlnxpu

495 I was able you use the web app. My problem was no way to access voter lists. In my precinct they read drivers licenses Electronically. The only way to see names was to stand behind a clerk. Talk about voter intimidation. No printouts available. I finally gave up on reporting voters.

496 I was on Project ORCA in Jacksonville, Florida. I posted some of this in an earlier thread, but I'll repeat it here in case anyone is interested. (I apologize for our local team ruining your Thursday Night Football. But hey, Andrew Luck!) ORCA worked for me, but it wasn't easy. I got the phone calls and the emails, but when I went to the Victory Office to ask about local training, they didn't know anything about ORCA. It's clear that no one from Boston coordinated with the local GOP. Finally, I was given the phone number of the person who organized the local poll watchers, and she told me about a meeting held in a Holiday Inn a week before Election Day. About 30 or 40 people attended the meeting. I wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't pestered people at the Victory Center. I got my credentials without incident, and had my polling assignment the before attending the aforementioned meeting. I even got a phone call from a volunteer the Thursday before election day confirming that I had recieved the information. I was finally was able to open the web-based 'app' around 5:30 Tuesday morning. I was stationed in a precinct in the inner city that had a D/R split of 1100 D and 300 R. I couldn't work the striker list in real time because the poll workers didn't ask for the voters' names when they came in to vote. They only asked for their ID. Thus, I had to periodically go through the rolls to complete the striker list. I encountered three roving attorneys on Tuesday, two for Bill Nelson, and one for Romney. The Romney guy was there twice and stuck around for a while. The Nelson attorneys popped in and left. There was no Obama poll watcher. I posted a comment and someone from Boston called me back immediately. All of this had me thinking that the ground game was going smoothly. I couldn't have been more wrong. When the last voters left at 7:08, three white guys wearing Obama gear came in to use the bathroom. Obviously, they were canvassing the neighborhood and kicking our ass while I was marking off Obama voters from my striker list. My biggest complaint with my own experience, besides the lack of coordination between Boston and the local GOP, is my polling assignment. What the fuck was I doing in the hood when I could have been making phone calls or canvassing GOP neighborhoods? I assumed I was there to watch for electioneering and fraud rather than GOTV. So I got it to work, but I had to jump through hoops to make it happen. The campaign should've coordinated better with the local GOP and provided their volunteers with direct support so that they didnt have to resort to going to the Victory Centers for information. It sounds like it was one guy running this thing, and he was obviously overwhelmed by the response.

497 "The bitter irony of this entire endeavor was that a supposedly small government candidate gutted the local structure of GOTV efforts in favor of a centralized, faceless organization in a far off place (in this case, their Boston headquarters). Wrap your head around that." The bitter irony of that sentence is that you don't get that it is a metaphor for the Republican party.

498 SarahT overstates it but there is a solid kernel of truth there.  It was a mistake to have a 'single point of failure'.   It's okay to 'report up' but had local things been allowed to be managed locally (while sending information in realtime up) who knows how different it could have been?  

Plenty of spanish speakers calling those similar and asking them to go for Mitt.. how different would be all the 'official analysis based on exit polls'.

We risk so much on 'exit polls' when the project of getting people to the polls was botched so badly!

499 Orca sounds a mess, but just read through the contempt for the American people displayed in this thread to see why you lost. Blame it on voter fraud, that's always a popular excuse (never real evidence to back it up of course), blame it on Romney being insufficiently conservative, blame it on the media, but much of the discourse makes me wonder why you want to govern a country where you don't like the majority of the population?

And the ludicrous caricature of President Obama as incompetent and extreme, a hater of America, is another reason for this loss. "Clear eyes," right?

What I'd like to see is some true conservatism in this country. Not the identity politics, self-delusion, mindlessness and hatred that puts money into the pockets of media fools that win no matter what the outcome. We need a healthy two party system for the betterment of the country, and right now the Republican party isn't holding up its end of the bargain.

Losing the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 presidential elections should set off warning bells. It's not the bogeymen, it's you.

500 @Bill, look at a red / blue map of the USA lately county by county?   Two thin blue coasts and a blue bit in the rust belt.   Several million less voted for D's that last time, R's close.   Within 3 million votes of so many cast is not a call for a major overhaul.  This should have been a landslide for Obama crowing about his great success this last four years.   Instead the day after the election, not before, CNBC warns of a looming second recession.  

Without NBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, ABC and CBS in the tank for D's and only FOX there on the other side.... outspent by O with the power of the incumbency.... No, the R's have some work to do.   Doable work.

501 By the way, the tribal vote will NEVER change. I'm a lifelong Michigander. Detroit NEVER got better. Minorities took over the city and each round got worse and worse. NEVER better. If you want or appease the minority vote: Your future is = Detroit

502 I was a last minute rover. It took a while to find someone at Headquarters who knew it was okay to set us up (on voting day) on the spot. We went thru 2-3 people who told us we couldn't do it because we weren't pre-credentialed till we found someone who said yes, we could do it. Loggin into ORCA was time-consuming, took over 15 min. Once we got user and password assignments and identified the precinct we were pushing, and got on the app, the precinct list came up on my phone and checking off names from the polling list was easy. I had 3 precincts so each time I went to a new precinct, I had to call back and headquarters had to get me the new precinct list. It wasn't difficult but I did feel like a pest calling headquarters. Once I updated the information there was no send button so I just trusted that someone somewhere was getting the information and able to use it.

503  I think this is a great conversation to have. The party and outside groups dropped $1 billion in traditional marketing. If they want to succeed next time they need to start building a social media machine now. They need to start recruiting local workers now. They need to use the workers and machine to develop effective messaging and train everyone on how to use it now. They need to develop outreach and get out the vote now. Devote $100 million a year into that for 4 straight years and you will get more value than the $1 billion you just flushed down the toilet on Romney's failed campaign. I am a social media pro and I can tell you that it has never been used effectively in politics. It can be, but requirement one is put the time in day in day out for years, not just during a brief campaign cycle.

504 Hunkering down in Duval.

Posted by: buck schotte at November 08, 2012 08:58 PM (ju2yV

****

Howdy, neighbor.

You'll find there are a few of us here.

505 I was on the other end, on the Boston Celtics home court.  I got up at 4 am and got home little before midnight.  I got to sit for 16 hours on a folding metal chair.  I went to "training" at the Garden Monday night.  Another 6 hours including driving.  I was one of the 900 people trying to assist you folks in the field.  My district was Orange County FL.  90% of the calls were about being denied any access to the voter rolls, credentials or not.  I forwarded most of these to the legal team.  The system was down more than it was up.  I did get to chat with a lot of great, dedicated people. I picked the district because I graduated from an Orlando high school in 1961.  Thank God I thought to bring a cushion for the chair.  It was fun and frustrating.  They told us they didn't start setting up the project until May.  Software was designed from scratch.  All new concept: all the faults we encountered were inevitable, I guess.  Most of my advice when folks were stymied was to go to the Victory Center and make phone calls.

I had the same problem with my HP printer.  Don't know how yellow cartridge ran out, I never printed in color.  Had an important doc to print, printer told me I "must" put in a yellow cartridge for "printer health."  Conspiracy theory: more $$ in colored ink, printers add a little when they print black to sell the color ones.  Took my doc to office max and my printer to the garbage chute.

I live in MA if you want to visit for commiseration.

506 Let me tell you about my experience with my local GOP this cycle. I am an older worker, late 50's. I have a very strong background in media, event planning, working with volunteers, and other similar skills. I applied for a position as Coordinator of Volunteers. After my interview I was not informed whether I had gotten the job, in spite of the fact I was not only a job seeker, but a constituent and potential donor. It is general practice, to say nothing of curteous, to let job applicants know their status, whether they get the job or not. I called and emailed the local office many times, just seeking a resolution. Never got an email or call in return. I would have dropped it but I was shocked at how unprofessionally I was being treated. I have some friends who have friends high up in the local GOP, and I griped to them. Soon thereafter I got a call from the top guy, who was very rude to me, resentful I had pushed the matter. He told me that I had to understand that the woman I interviewed with was very young and inexperienced, and did not know much about human resources, hiring etc. So that was his excuse - he had hired someone who was not competent. Just great.

507 I received two precinct assignments 2 days prior and tried to straighten it out. Local victory office knew nothing. Received an email 2:30 am on 11/6, printed the list and even I had credential from local election office I was thrown out for first hour as I was listed as watcher for Senate race at other polling place 20 miles away. Did get call back after reaching legal and she told me to give u. Worked out with election office but lost an hour. Biggest problem after was trying watch for names on 4 screens 2 feet apart. Login worked but list had a lot of gaps and never got over about 30% capture. What a giant waste of time and effort.

508 There's been no small amount of print (or zeroes and ones) dedicated to the question of how a community organizer from Chicago could rise to become President of the United States. I guess this post just illustrates the advantage that a community organizer has over a CEO that doesn't think about the things that somebody who doesn't have access to corporate support needs to get out the vote.

509 I will say though, you can't blame this election only on a better "get out the vote". 

Obama's much slicker GOTV drew in 10 million fewer voters than 2008 despite far more resources being devoted to it.  Sometimes, it's just a cycle where people choose not to vote, it has nothing to do with actual system.

After all that was thrown at this election, I have my doubts that a phone call from a random volunteer on Election Day would have made much difference.  Really?  You live in Ohio and you're a Republican and one more phone call on Election Day and you would have voted? 

510 OMG. The more I read the more ill to my stomach I become.

511 Amy, Tanner and Centinello - the names of the ORCA project in Colorado. Never recv'd "package"but did receive email replies "we're working on it"

512 Surprise! The party that rejects math, science, and statistics can't run a website! When you seek to attract the least educated, least informed voters, you should not be surprised when you get volunteers who can't type "https".

513 The party that has gone 1000+ days without passing a Federal budget shouldn't bitch about math impairment.

514 I am not connected with campaign but how could this have happened? Weren't there any tech wizards in control? How did the Obama campaign deal with this? There has to be a winning strategy...what about a back up plan? This makes me sick but in the end I now know it was in God's hands and I need to accept it for what it was. I prayed nightly on my knees for 40 nights. I got others to join me and my conclusion is that God is in control. God bless America and the Republic for which it stands.

515 You know what?  Out of all these conversations, out of all this frantic keying in voter's names, not one bit has been said about what was done with that data.  Was it really all entered into some computer server somewhere--and then NOTHING was done with it?! 

I've read the Ds took their punch lists of voters and actually got them to the polls, but with our vaunted ORCA program and its failures, did anyone actually use this data to find voters who did not make it to the polls and actually take them there to cast their ballot?

That's the question no one is answering. 

(Thank you, ORCA person in MA, for your analysis of what happened in the Boston HQ with the NC pod.  That was very illuminating.)

516 Thank the gods we didn't nominate someone besides Romney. We might have lost nearly every swing state, or as we will be calling them in the future: permanent blue states.

517 Can you say.... Cluster Fuck?

518 The good news is though that the people who voted for will soon realize how lousy his policies are, when they lose their jobs or have to pay the $2500 Obamacare penalty. Karma is a you-know-what.

519 I was in the ORCA Command Center in Boston. And believe me, all 800 of us volunteers were just as surprised as all of you. Please do not for one minute that ORCA was a plant nor designed to take anyone down. The administrators that I was involved with (Florida) were just great. I (and you) please cannot blame the well-intentioned people that were running it for the system lapses. I have worked with software and capacity planning for a good long while and the "home-grown" system was not vetted enough for what it was intended to do. I know for a fact a couple of the "down-times" were due to the amount of large data that was hitting the system. I have always had "load-balanced" systems so that this would not happen. There are many web-sites that encounter the same issues, but they do not live for one day. They did build this application in 9 months to help with the technological and social aspects of the campaign. They missed MANY ways and applications that would reach people for this effort, but they did well in the months that followed the primaries. All I can say is that you reach people where they ARE, not where you want them to BE. ie. Older folks like to be talked to, younger would rather be emailed, texted or twittered. Christians you reach them through their pastors, ministers, priests and rabais. And you should reach out to latinos, African-Americans and meet people where they are. Romney himself did this, Romney's staff did not. Romney would be a much better POTUS than our current, but you and I did not sell it, enough. Here is a quote that one of my friends just gave me; Why American Freedom is in its Eleventh Hour A well-known self-destructive cycle of democratic behavior has been attributed to an eighteenth century historian by the name of Alexander Tytler. Whether Tytler is the original author or not, the concept of democratic self-destruction has been proven accurate, right here in America. “From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” Where you think America is is where you will vote. Please read the article to find out where we really are. Copied from http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2181 May G-D have mercy on us...Cause Obama will not..

520 Rick, so when it worked right, the data was used to good effect?

521 "We lost by fairly small margins in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. If this had worked could it have closed the gap? I sure hope not for my sanity's sake." No, it would NOT have closed the gap. Demographics, my friend, demographics. bigpale--Independents aren't just non-partisan because they don't vote for ideology. They are also non-partisan because they also don't vote AGAINST ideology. Moving to the middle is moving to the left. Run a conservative. A real one. A happy one. Win the base, win the turnout, and the middle will follow. The middle votes on performance, and "vibe" not on ideology. They don't have time for ideology and partisanship (the same thing to them). If Obama has destroyed America like we expect him to, the middle will come. If he hasn't we're not winning anyway. You're an idiot. Demographics, demographics, demographics: Latinos: Since ‘04, we’ve watched two successive GOP candidates work in tandem to cut GOP support here by nearly a third. And those Latino numbers aren’t getting smaller. Give it three or four cycles - Florida will be completely gone and Texas will be a toss-up. Have fun with that electoral map. Evangelicals: Obama did worse with evangelicals, but guess what? They’re disappearing anyway. The flip side is that Romney’s moralistic panders to them cost him among… Single ladies: Put your hands up! Single ladies, another growing part of the electorate, handed Romney a beat-down of 40+ points. Why? Because conservatives couldn’t stop talking about their right to choose and their birth control, in order to please the… Catholics! But what’d that get Romney? Obama won Catholics in 2008 and won then AGAIN by a smaller but statistically insignificant margin. Lots of us said months ago that this huge pander to the Catholics on the contraception mandate was stupid, stupid politics. Why? Because Catholics haven’t paid attention to their leaders in ages anyway. Young voters: They basically hate the GOP right now. In the middle of a terrible economy, Obama gave them the ability to stay on their parents’ health plan. The GOP wanted to take that way. The GOP tells them that their gay friends are second-class citizens. That pisses them off. We’ve already covered the contraception issue. And to top it off, the old white guys in GOP leadership actually think that if you just sell the fiscal message the right way, they’ll overlook all that stuff and climb into bed with the evangelicals. Ha! Fat chance! So here’s the problem. The GOP keeps pissing away opportunities to improve its standing with growing parts of the electorate in order to cleave itself even more to its rapidly dwindling base.

522 I was at the Boston Command Center. You're right, the system did go down. We had such an influx of calls that Microsoft thought the Boston Garden was being hacked and shut it down for a while until it could get straightened out. There were so many calls coming in for legal because of suspected voter fraud that they couldn't handle all the calls. Great concept but as one commentor stated, there was definitely a breakdown somewhere towards the end. I had been getting the emails to joint the calls since May also. I'm sorry that some were left hanging out there, that really sucks but we tried to field as many questions as possible but we weren't given good responses back from our team leaders either.

523 This is truly unfortunate.  We should have had the best systems in the world and I hold the chief executive, Mitt Romney , responsible.  As chairman of a local Republican Party  for 8 years I had developed a web based system where volunteers could go on the web and see the voting behavior of everyone in their precinct , on their street or  even on their  block in a form they could print or take simple notes to know whom to contact.  I updated nightly with early voting results and  I am not tech guru  What I wanted was to capture the enthusiasm of volunteers the minute they called in to do something. .I retired in 2008 at County Chairman. 
  By 2012 anyone could have made a simple system like ours into sophisticated  ipad or smart phone app  with vast improvements.  and surely our side had the brains to develop such a system from scratch in less than few months if not to find a system that is already working. In business, the chief executive and his staff gets replaced.   We need to make sure the next one and his staff can build a better mousetrap.  We, the side of free enterprise and unleashing human creativity, apparently lost GOTV  to the side of crony capitalism and stealing others ideas.
Failure is just a milesetone on the road to success.  We can beat the dems at GOTV  eventhough we rarely have. 
Those who comment that GOTV does not matter have not fought a ground campaign.  A good GOTV campaign could not have saved McCain, change a 6 point loser into a winner,  but  it  could have given Romney the votes he need to be the next President of the United States, changing a 3 point loser into a 1 point winner in key states.
And the stuff about poll watching is horrendous.  Every federal  election cycle I have my students do 6-8 hours of pollwatching and write a paper about it for my Law of Politics course.
Setting up people to poll watch with the materials needed to be a poll watcher is a no brainer.  
I was astounded our side  did not have every precinct covered in Cuyahoga County and did not anticipate what would happen in Philly. 
I know volunteer organizations are difficult to manage but one reason Romney was supposed to be qualified to be president was his business acumen and being a manager in some form or other is required for great business leaders. The professional staff should have been first rate.
All this is in the past.    We don't need to change our conservative creed or move to the center.  We need more effective leadership and organization

524 If the party doesn't fire the pansy faced national director, retire all the old white guys, and get past 1972, they will be forever marginalized. My money is on a 3rd party that will rise from the ashes of the coming financial apocalypse. Post-crash, a moderate party of grown ups, unwilling to cowtow to the lunatic fringe of the left and right will lead the republic out of this unmitigated disaster.

525 Harry, What planet do you live on with this comment. "This should have been a landslide for Obama crowing about his great success this last four years. Instead the day after the election, not before, CNBC warns of a looming second recession. " The GOP and every conservative said that because of the economy it should be easy to beat Obama and take back the Senate. In fact several conservative commentators even said if the GOP can't beat Obama in this economy the party should just dissolve. I always find it hilarious when people try to change history. The fact is that Romney lost because he had to become too conservative in order to win the primary. The GOP will continue to lose elections that require a national vote as long as they continue with these extreme right wing policies. But as far as this particular fiasco it should educate each of you about how poorly Romney runs a campaign. It should make you wonder about how poorly he would run a country. Romney lost. Get over it. Quit calling people names that voted for Obama. By the way even if Romney would have won Ohio he still would have lost because Obama won Florida.

526 Truely remarkable that a man running as someone who knows how to make America work again could run something so broken. I thought he was supposed to be a genius business man!

527 Some have mentioned this, but if you look at the last thirty-two years, the only election that didn't have a personable candidate was Bush/Dukakis in '88. Even in years where a newly-elected President didn't have a big margin (Clinton in '92 and Bush in '00), the guy who was more personable won.

Look at this list:

Reagan over Carter. Reagan over Mondale. Clinton over Bush. Clinton over Dole. Bush over Gore. Bush over Kerry. Obama over McCain. Obama over Romney.

It's a cult of personality for both parties. If you can't put a guy out there who can engage voters and make them feel like he can talk over a beer, enjoy himself, and let loose a bit, then you cannot win presidential elections. Some will decry this, but Reagan was elected more for his personality than his policies. Substance is important to govern, but style and presentation is important to the vast majority of voters.

528

I am so glad that this post came out.  I had seen many explainations for what had happened, and having sorted out what was going on - quantitatively - none of them made sense.  Votes were missing.  I didn't see how the hell the Obama camp could have "stolen" them, but being of the Chicago machine, they were my primary suspect.

 

We've been hearing "the polls were right, after all," even by Morris.  That's CRAP!!  Just look at that last CNN Poll.  Sure, it said the vote would be close, but that was obviously fixed, to be non-commital.  They had FUDGED the numbers to make it come out that way, using internals (and that's the REAL part of the poll) that were WRONG.  They had it D+11, I's by +22, when the reality was something like D+6, I's +5.  They were WAY off.

 

Even these guys who supposedly got the D+ right, did so FOR THE WRONG REASON.  Last time, there was a lot of enthusiasm for Obama. This time he managed to replace most of the support he lost by competently scraping the bottom of the barrel.  This wasn't about things being the same as last time, at it wasn't a bunch of new Hispanics suddenly materializing in two years, it was about Republicans completely screwing up the ground game on the day of the Big Dance. The guys who got it right didn't estimate things better, or magically predict the unpredictable - they were just lucky.

 

The rough formula is 0.8*(R-D)+0.3*I.  D+6 means R-D = -6, so that's a 4.8 point deficit.  His +5 edge with Indies was worth +1.5.  Hurricane Sandy - due, apparently to the Homer Simpsons out there - cost Romney about 10 points with the Indies, or 3 points in the popular vote.  But the Ground game should have been R+1 instead of D+6, and so this ground game thing cost us about 0.8*7 = 5.6.  So Sandy cost us about 3, and ORCA cost us at least 5.

 

The Republicans were there - we just failed to go get them - badly.

 

We missed out on what may have been our only chance to get out of this financial crisis with a modest amount of pain because our candidate was the great miracle worker who can turn around financially-troubled organizations, but he was horribly inexperienced in politics, and apparently the Republican National organization was no help.  Where the hell does anybody get the idea that a massive change to a crucial component of an election - involving brand-new, untested software - was a good idea? OMFG.

 

And - realistically - Mitt had managed big money organizations, but not orgs with huge numbers of people.

 

Our main problem is that we have to deal with the media.  A Republican candidate is like a Tuskeegee Airman - they were required to be a lot better than the white guys, just because there were relatively few slots, and no room for error in their little experiment.  We must neutralize the media.  We can't win things if you have to be so goddamn perfect.  For all the hype, Mitt made very few REAL gaffes and serious blunders. Sure, there's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, and some may be real, but if there was an even SOMEWHAT even playing field, mediawise, Obama wouldn't have had a chance in hell.

 

Screw the demographics.  If you have the media brainwashing everybody against you 24/7, and you still win sometimes, your problem isn't the message, or the demographics.  Obama could launch a nuclear attack against Houston, and the f-ing media wouldn't cover it and the Senate wouldn't impeach him.

 

529 Fwiw - Canon printers suck just as bad on the magenta ink always running out and can't print black-and-white bullshit. Let me know if you ever find a reasonably priced home office printer that doesn't cannibalize its own ink at the rate of a cartridge a month.

530 An interesting and enraging story. Now someone do one about who and how (name names!) the Romney Campaign/Republican Party agreed to 3/3 liberals as debate moderators. Lets clean house.

531 @Optimizer Good post

532 Wow . . . the folks who believe in "makers/takers" and "build it yourself" are crappy at organizing and working together and then throw feces at each other when they lose . . . So . . . it's not that your basic ideas/principles necessarily lead to the failure of cooperative effort? Couldn't be . . . gosh, I hope you guys stick with your principles for a while longer while we get the country back on track.

533 Great post. I had a similar experience with one variation. I did get an e-mail from the local victory office (a misnomer if one ever existed) advising me to pick up a poll-watcher certificate over the w/e. After several unanswered e-mails requesting the "packet" I was assured I had already received, I got a terse e-mail from someone's Blackberry advising that I was NOT on any poll-watcher list. At least I was saved the drive.

I'm an IT wonk too -- data warehouses and big data mostly. I cannot comprehend why a national candidate would not have surrounded himself with competent people. I KNOW they abound.

534

@532:

Throw feces? Please admit that had Romney won, rather than 'throwing feces', Twitter would have crashed from all the assassination threats against Romney. There is much blame to go around, and soul-searching for the losers, but spare us all the lectures on losing with decorum.

535 And this is why I never saw the Romney team's "business experience" as an asset. I have spent too much time working with and for large companies to be surprised by this story (current employer excepted). Read the Daily WTF to find many, many similar examples. Maybe next time the GOP can nominate a cattle rancher. I've got a feeling that sort of experience would be more useful for politics.

536 Posted by: Sheesh at November 09, 2012 07:54 AM (C0Ppg) Come back after the new regulations and tax increases come into play. The gravy train is just about out of gravy. When it is...F everyone. You voted for this shit.

537 Ace, thanks for this account. So, the man sold to us as the CEO candidate completely whiffed on the most important management project of his career? This isn't surprising to any independent from massachusetts. I voted for him once before and saw how he "managed" the state. He raised thousands of fees across the state, nickel and diming us to squeeze out revenue so that he could say that he cut taxes. Meanwhile he just forced towns and cities to do the tax raising. Nice.... Believe me, we're better off this way. And to the yahoo saying "let's neutralize the media" ... maybe you were sleeping back in late August -- AUGUST -- when Nate Silver and two other independent stats analysts calculated that Romney had little chance to win. Maybe you were too busy reading "unskewed polls" and drinking Rove's Kool-Aid. For your own good, and for the good of the country, please understand that the media isn't the problem, it's people trying to manipulate the media.

538 John, so glad someone is reporting on the problems regarding ORCA. I was a poll watcher with ORCA. I got my packet and certification through email...grumbled a little that we were expected to plunk down $12 at FedEx/Kinkos or burn through ink cartridges to print out all those pages, but figured at the time that it was a small sacrifice. I was at the polling place before 6 AM but was unable to get into the ORCA site. And, like you experienced, I was unable to get anyone on the phone to figure out what was going on for at least an hour. Finally I got through and was told that the system was down. I was writing down names as fast as I could but couldn't keep up with three lines constantly moving. I was able to access ORCA from about 1 PM till 5 PM so I switched to using my iPad (polling place was in a school so we had access to WiFi). Then a little after 5PM, I hit the wrong button and was logged out. I was unable to log in again, so I figure that was around the time it crashed. I took names manually for another hour and then called them in since the site was still down.

I'm a web developer too, and you're right...there were clear signs that this application and site were not properly developed.  It worked when the site was up, but clearly there were problems, and likely associated with not being able to handle the load. The http vs https thing probably threw a lot of people as well.

539

My husband also volunteered to do ORCA....he has worked for Microsoft for a number of years, and knows his way around programs, apps, etc. He was being told this was just happening just in Colorado, apparently not true. He had the exact same problems described in this article, was frustrated with the masses being given the wrong PIN numbers, phone numbers that no one ever answered, etc.....as he watched the Dems do their jobs efficiently- working with strike lists(they would come in compare the lastest Dem voters names to what was on their list and leave to make phone calls or visits to get ppl out to vote). He is now curious as to who designed this program? How many trial runs were done? He wonders if the system was hacked or perhaps, was designed by someone on the "other side" knowing it would be a huge failure? Boy, if it was the latter......I don't know. I heard that ORCA had 37,000 volunteers, and if each one of those volunteers could've brought in at least 20 voters, that this election probably would've had a different outcome. If that number is true - heads should roll. I'd like to know who first suggested this system, who designed it, etc.?

By the way, how many states reported problems with ORCA? Were there any states that were problem free? Just curious.

 

540 Weird, I volunteered in Ohio with Project Orca and it worked perfectly fine for me.

I got my poll watcher certificate to print off and did print off my packet a couple days before. Although the website was down for a bit it worked fine when I needed it to (to update who voted.)

I called the help line periodically throughout the day and got immediate responses.

I'm surprised that you had all those issues.

541 I also volunteered for ORCA in NH.  Could not access the "app" which is not an "app".  Should have known something was up with I called in for the last conference call and I couldn't get through - busy signal, finally did make it through and was told there was no Town Meeting.  Tuesday a.m. called Boston, they told me that they were having trouble with the site.  I reviewed the web address that was provided in  the packet (yes I did get one of those!) and the web address was wrong.  Boston gave me the correct address, and I still couldn't get on. The packet they sent me contained all voters, it should have been just registered Republicans.  Tried to keep up with the list, but I was the only one there for an hour after the polls opened and we had over 1,000 people in line at 6:45 a.m....humanly impossible with four lines broken down by alphabet.  The letter from NH Rep Committee, had a typo, I asked to have it fixed, no response.  Called in results of the voting in the, never sure that it was recorded.  Spoke to the attorney who showed up a couple of times and reported all the above and also issues I had seen at the polls, he e-mailed Boston, and 20 minutes later, no response. This has been more than a disaster, it now has dire consequences.

542 I never even heard of 'orca' until I read this post.

543 For what it's worth, there was a lot of confusion between national and local teams. I got into the polls just fine without a certificate, the chief judge had my name on a list. The problem is that laws vary. I'm in NC and here we couldn't have our smartphones out in the voting enclosure (not that ORCA ever worked for us anyway). So I think a lot of conflicting instructions came from the national team because of all the local variances. Another problem we ran into was that the national team tried to assign the volunteers to polling locations but apparently in NC they can't do that, it has to be the local party. So that created a whole round of confusion and contradictory e-mails. Plus, not getting the packet until the day before, yeah, major pain. Fortunately I printed it no problem but it was just a bust all around. I'm disappointed to here the problems weren't localized to NC.

544 I am a software quality manager and I agree I saw the signs of failure here early too. I also sent multiple emails to HQ for questions, and I was one of the 30000 fired up volunteers ready to go on election day (I was actually able to get the day off work). I am in Michigan and we could have turned out more voters here. I kept hearing about how many phone calls were being made, but I know personally I was receiving at least 4 or 5 a day from Michigan and different states. Finally I started telling the callers that they were wasting their time calling people who have voted in every election for the last 20 years and they needed to stop harassing us. I never got my info/packet/credentials for ORCA. I also figured they just had enough people, and I noticed when I went to my polling place there was someone in my precinct with a strike list. I did not get a chance to ask who she was doing it for. It's too bad. There was great potential here. I have chastised many of the Ron Paul supporters I know because even though they claim to be "afraid" of Obama, they would not vote Romney on principle. Who knows if they would have made a difference, but when we threw them a tow rope to help us out they sat on their hands. I don't think I'll be able to forget that. I am angry we are stuck with Obama for another 4 years, and the giant steps we have just taken towards Cloward-Piven. I believe Romney was a good man. I'm not sure why/how all this went down the way it did, but it is sure a bitter pill to swallow.

545 Conservatives have an 18th century view of the world and an early 20th century understanding of technology. When will they ever realize their paradigm is dead.

546 @545 Umm seems to me that your hyper-tribal view of the world is pre-historic.

547 I volunteered to poll watch and was sent an email lauding the ORCA program. I participated in the conference call and voted absentee to make myself available for any location. No packet arrived. I called my county party headquarters and was told it would be coming via email. I never got it, nor my credentials. I went to the voting station early Tuesday. Another person showed up as the precinct poll watcher, so I decided to help the cause by passing out sample ballots. I had a bad feeling that the Romney campaign might not be as well managed as it was proclaiming.

548

The white voters of yesteryear would have voted no matter what. They're
the greatest generation. Their sons, while still white,....

Thank god for small blessings.

 

Joking aside if Romney screwed the GOTV that badly what would he have done with the executive branch? It's not as if he was short of money. Wasn't he supposed to be the management genius? He got his rear end handed to him by the community organizer.

549 Makes me shudder to think that this inept organization thought that they could actually improve our country.  If the Repubs can't run a campaign properly, failing to heed, or even see, the obvious warning signals, imagine the devastation they could have caused to this country with four years at the helm.  Just remember what George W. did to our economy! 

550 The dumbing down of America has reached graduation day. We made finally it. The country is imploding.

551 I can't help but contrast this to '92 when I was a Clinton precinct captain in CA. Organizers said poll workers would have an updated list of who had voted every hour or so, that we could read it, and to call if they refused to let us do so. One of my precincts refused to let me read the list. I called the number. They had a lawyer there in 15 minutes and I got to read the list.

552 Great post.  I'm an over 60 white protestant female living in a red state.  Libertarian by temperament. No party affiliation, i.e. Independent.  I should be a natural for the Republicans.  I didn't vote for one Rep candidate this past election. First time ever.  Why? because the public face of the party has become either that of a bloviated, frat-boy loudmouth, who couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag or a overcompensated rich boy who takes over assets and keeps most of them for himself.

When the face of the party stops shouting about how wonderful they are and how much better they would do stuff (than, well, just about everyone else on earth, especially women) and actually sets to work to actually, gee, WORK (and I don't count raking casino profits work, I'm sorry) and do a decent job instead of demonstrating incompetence and blame-thy-neighbor for everything then I'll reconsider them.  Until then, Democrats, Libertarians and the Neonpurplesocks party will be getting my votes.

553 My wife and I were ORCA volunteers in SW Virginia. I was assigned a polling location unfamiliar to me.When I showed up at 5:45am Tuesday morning I discovered that I was the only ORCA volunteer for TWO precincts which were both voting at the same grammer school, and the two precincts were in seperate places (gym and cafeteria) seperated by  about 150 feet and two solid walls. Naturally I could only be in once place at a time, so one precinct had no ORCA volunteer. Then I couldn't access the "app" with my Blackberry (I know I'm a luddite not having a smart phone). I called the Boston HQ multiple time and finally reached someone who said he'd change my password (!!) and that would allow me to access it. NOT. I finally  dialed in by phone and laboriously entered each voter ID . My wife was able to access the site at her location. We don't give out A's  "for effort" in the blood sport of politics. We needed proven systems to make this work and what we got was epic fail. Oh well, just the Republic was at stake.

554 I got my packet no problem. Wonder what all the fuss about. We lost fair and square. Any claim that Obama is a Marxist is rubbish. Obamacare is Romneycare. We were simply against it in order to destroy him, to make him a one term president. We need to seize the initiative and have Sarah at the top of the ticket next time.

555 I feel your pain here - sounds like a frustrating mess for people who put their hearts and souls into their candidate. But as a liberal who is just dropping in, I would like to leave some "advice" - read comment 38 - I would encourage you all to do exactly what that guy says in the next election! (grin).

556 I will say this: In CO (Jefferson County) the polling places (at least in the area I was in) were a cluster. There was NO identification whatsoever, no GOP support staff, no, signs, no candidate support, no nothing. It took me 45 minutes to even locate the precinct, much less vote. I can't say if this is county wide, or anything, but I'm quite interested at this point in getting some data and plugging some numbers.

557 Feel your pain man. Seems like no kind of QA or UAT environment testing was done. Plus something of this scale would need a fairly large service desk organization to field calls even if it worked well. Some just took the money and ran with it. Whoever was in charge of this effort should be beaten with a stick...metaphorically of course. Or not.

558 My packet too arrived Monday, and I too had to go buy cartridges to print it out. I never got the web-based app to work, and so entered by hand the pin numbers of the people who voted via phone. My serious question of the day was, why am I working a primarily Democrat polling district if we're trying to get out the Republican vote? Out of the 532 who voted that day, 440 were for Obama. Frustrating to say the least.

559 I work in web based software and this is worse than "junior legue" it was amateur hour. If you can't be trusted to hire good people to manage very important but somewhat basic software development, you don't have the CEO experience you have been selling. They had time and money but failed to deliver and the buck stops with CEO Romney.

560 Immagine these people were elected to run the country! I guess they know how bad they are in running things, and that's why they object big government--it's a really complicated job!

561 In the email they sent telling me my poll watching location, they said to use that email as my certificate, which I did and it worked just fine. I also received my packet on Monday and about shit myself when I realized I needed to print up 42 pages. Thankfully I had enough ink and paper to get it done. Turns out I only used 1 of those 42 pages. I had no problems at all with accessing the website, logging in or checking people off as voted. I was on my iPhone 4. The other republican poll watcher brought an iPad and he had problems. He got kicked off before lunch and claimed he wasn't able to get back on the rest of the day, though I'm not sure he tried much because he was having a difficult time keeping up with marking people off. He found it easier to write names down and have me put them in during the very few down times we had. I found the website extremely easy to use and not confusing at all. I'm a little pissed now that I've read this because I'm wondering if they even received any of the information I was sending them.

562 I volunteered for the Orca program.  Had one conference call a week before the election during which they gave a brief rundown of the 'app'.  They said I'd get my information and certification 'shortly' in the mail.  Never got anything in the mail.  The day before the election I got the poll information as well as an email saying if I hadn't received my certification I needed to go to the local party headquarters to pick it up.  Also that there was an 'exciting' conf call to call in to at which some 'interesting' people wanted to say a few encouraging words.  Also if there were any issues to email or call the fellow organizing the whole thing (whose contact info I imagine was on the packets emailed to all 30,000 volunteers).  I noted issues with the voter lists (such as, my wife wasn't listed) and tried to call or email, never getting a response.  I went and picked up the certification and it was for a different district miles from the one I had been assigned to.  I tried to call and email to the mail contact number and the guy at the local part HQ and never got any kind of response.

Election day I showed up at my local polling place in Philadelphia, presented my credentials and was made welcome.  Tried to log onto the site for hours with no luck.  Called the help line and was told that no one could log in for Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina (sounds suspicious right there).  They allegedly reset my password and told me they'd call me back in an hour.  I never heard anything so after two hours I called them back and they said they were still having problems and to use the phone line to call in names.  I did that and punched in 180 PIN numbers for people who had voted that day, sometime during which the system crashed.  Tried the helpline again and got someone at 'The Garden" who said the system was down again and to try again later.  Tried again later and logged more PINs.  Never got any response from anyone about anything; and I'm sure all of the information I gathered was totally wasted.  Was a huge waste of time and effort.  I have a hard time understanding how something that had such importance to the election could be such an enormous, gigantic pile of garbage.

563 OK, I'm an Big Government, Obamatron Liberal. I'll spare you guys the gloating, because, darn it, I think the country needs an effective conservative movement just as badly as it needs us liberals. Democracy is not about who can grab 50%+1. It's about dialog and compromise. So it pains me to see stuff like this. You guys are letting yourself be led around by the nose by incompetent fools whose only talent is making you hate the other side. Romney got the nomination because he was the only TP-compliant candidate who wasn't obviously demented. And you were so anxious to get rid of Obama that you overlooked his ineptitude and dishonesty, and crap like this is the result. Please, please, stop listening to the talking heads, the bloviators, and the conspiracy nuts. We're not here to take away your guns and tell you what doctor you can see. Stop calling us commies because of BS you hear from braindead commentators. Look at your core values and try fighting us on the basis of what you really believe in. We won't always agree -- mostly we won't -- but we need to *talk* damnit.

564

@563 Agree with much of what you said but "You guys are letting yourself be led around by the nose by incompetent fools whose only talent is making you hate the other side" is a bit much.

Et tu?

565 Have any of your wingnuts considered that the reason he lost is that he was too conservative and most sane people in the country don't think Obama is "the worst President ever" and all the other bullshit you are spouting? I'm perfectly happy if you never learn. Go ahead and try to find some other country to live in that is as great as this one if all you want to do is cut it down. Go ahead and push for a more conservative tea bagger next time, go ahead and ignore demographics, go ahead and ignore women and immigrants. I will be counting Democratic victories and feeding on your sweet, sweet, deluded tears for decades to come.

566 You know what would have made things run more smoothly? A community organizer.

567 I am the Chairman for my County Republican Committee, and Vice Chair of our Congressional District Committee.  Alarm bells were ringing like mad for me since September. We went the whole month of September with no signs or collateral for all of southeastern Virginia. I begged and begged RPV for a "hard R list" for our congressional candidate to work from, but no "voter vault" or list was provided. Try running a congressional campaign with no voter data. Finally got a small wierd list from RPV. Most of my committee was not even on it. After many days of questioning I found out the list was people who had volunteered on Romney's web page. The Congressional campaign tried using this list to get voluteers and GOTV, but got many hangups and "why are you calling me, I'm a democrat!" I begged RPV for the usual list of registered voters sorted by precinct, but was told all of that was coming from Romney. It never did. We are used to assigning our volunteers to work inside and outside polls ourselves. With ORCA, we had no idea who would be where, or if the polls were covered or not. None of the training on the calls was state specific. We set up our own training, not knowing who the volunteers would be! I was finally able to find out Saturday before the election who had been assigned where. Half of my polls were not covered. I contacted the volunteers who had been assigned to polls and got them to forward their pdf packets to me for printing. That is the only way I was able to get a copy of the voter rolls. I begged for the unassigned precincts to be assigned to me so that I could at least have the voter rollls. (we have house of delegates elections next year and I need those damn lists!!!!)  I was informed that the campaign had moved beyond assigning polls. After more begging someone from the campaign sent me a complete list, but after opening it, the list was just census data for every resident of the county. All ov my volunteers had problems with the "app".  My opinion? A total attempt to bypass and alienate the existing party structure. They were going to show us how its done. How did that work out for you, a$$holes?

568 I was a part of Project Orca too. Though I did not encounter all the problems you experienced, I experienced a number of them. It seemed so carefully planned out when they were pitching it. In the end, it was a complete waste. I spent 12 hours at the polls for absolutely nothing.

569

@568  "It seemed so carefully planned out when they were pitching it."

Ironic that we conservatives make the 'style over substance' argument in cases like this. I've seen this time and again in grad school and the office, where people spend ten times as long on the PowerPoint as they do on the product. It usually goes exactly as you think it would. But at least the font size is consistent. 

570 I've been in IT for 23 years.  This sounds like sabatoge to me.

571 I read this article and the comments with absolute dismay. Articles about the Democratic process describe a very sophisticated and efficient machine combining software, human capital and organization. I support the conservative concepts of the constitution and am very concerned about the direction the country is going with the entitlements and massive debt. However the current alternatives are sadly lacking. The unbelievable blunders by some if the republican candidates and the above described incompetence of the Romney team makes we wonder if they really deserved to win. A lot of these Romney team members would have gotten jobs in his administration and from this display of stupidity in wonder if they were in any way ready to run the country. As much as I disagree with Obama's policies .. At least he knows how to get things accomplished for his side. The polling fiasco is another topic entirely... To misuse the goodwill of volunteers and waste their efforts in this way is criminal.

572 I too was a poll watcher using the orca program. I recieved an email on the week prior advising me to pick up my credentials at my board of elections and had not problems. I spent the entire day transmitting names on the orca program and i assume that they recieved the information. I think it was a well intentioned program, however a lot of volunteers probably did not have the computer skills to use the program and evidently it did'nt do any good anyway in the end.

573 Dumbing down of America? Romney 1.0 represented the ultimate dumbing down of the political process.  He stood for nothing except reducing taxes in the face of massive debt--and adding to the debt in the bargain.  Everything else he posited seemed like a charade, right down to his concession speech.

574 IT_Pro: Most definitely. It was really mean of the Obama campaign to intercept all those individual pieces of communication with thousands of Romney volunteers keeping them informed what was going on. And editing the checklist to make it look like a simple copy/paste error? Diabolical, I say. You must be pretty skilled to be able to provide a diagnosis so quickly from such limited information -- not quite as impressive as Bill Frist doing medical diagnosis from the floor of the Senate, but close.

575

So, Team Romney HQ gets infiltrated by libs who sabotaged the works. What did you expect? It's in Boston... Wasn't MA the only state that sent mass mailings to welfare recipients to vote?

 

576 I'm on isaac32767's Obama/Liberal/Blue team here, and agree about the need for dialogue and compromise. And I think this is not an additional facepalm. It's the *same one*. As many you have noted - the Romney case was: "I know how to run a business - I'm an experienced manager, a top-notch exec." This is just one symptom of his campaign that contradicted that claim - one the gen. public didn't see, but we saw a whole lot else about how his "running stuff" was going. I doubt very much that having this work better would have made a difference-making difference. I have been reading a lot of conservative "what went wrong," and it astonishes me that so much energy is going in directions unlikely to lead to a helpful and powerful expression of conservative ideas. I hope I'm wrong. (I thought Maddow's suggestions were pretty good, but I'm guessing that will be a minority opinion here.) And that is a shame. I know this loss is fresh, and it's appropriate to have a lot of churn, but some of the explanations I've read from conservatives seem like either self-justification or barking up the wrong tree. Or the taking up of the 'circular firing squad' the Democrats finally managed to stop forming. Can't recommend it. I know how that turns out. And this isn't all that went wrong. I don't think it's about a demographic shift *to the left*, but demography played into the problem that some (no, of course not all) on the right seemed to be going an extra mile to alienate an awful lot of voters. There's no way to demographize out of that, or to do any demographic outreach, without some change in *at least* tone - and probably message as well. And I'm not sure women are a 'demographic' per se. I are one. I don't vote my gender, ethnicity, age... my demographics. And waving hands and poohpoohing the notion that some Obama-attacking rhetoric was race-motivated is either naive, or some other thing even less likely to be strategically helpful. That's not just African-American votes it cost - and perhaps for some time to come; too few conservative voices called it out, and too many said it wasn't happening. That's pretty off-putting to lots of people, because it's, you know, vile, whether they find themselves in that demographic or not. Add an insincere candidate and all this campaign stuff, and no wonder the ideas weren't persuasive. They were overpowered by this other stuff. OR the American people did hear and understand them, and did not agree. Problem is, it's hard to know which.

577 "print in black and white with an empty magenta cartridge" Next time you might have luck with gutenprint we use it to make an old printer with dead color guns work. (probably you'll never see this comment, but what the heck)

578 @575 - Really? That is conspiracy theory at it's nuttiest.

579 I work on the deep blue side (independent expenditure) but have friends on the red side of the fence. So I was getting bits and pieces of this via text message on Election Day. We were using our scant break time from the doors howling laughing at y'all and your ORCA. What an unmitigated disaster. The worst part is, some snake oil salesman/"job creator" is going to be able to employ a new valet after making a 30% commission selling that piece of crap technology ultimately to some unwitting shareholders. And as a labor IE, yeah we use a lot of bodies, but we're not low tech at all. We have been using (and improving) a heavily field tested system for a few cycles now. Our apps worked perfectly. Our targeting runs and deployments were spot on. Our ward captains were exactly where they were supposed to be on Tuesday AM. There were a couple wards in a couple cities where we came statistically close to 100%! All the pollsters said there was no way we could match 2008 historic turnout. In the most important counties in Florida, Ohio and other battlegrounds - we actually beat it by 3%-5% percentage points. By 4 PM, we actually started feeling sorry for your guys. Mass deployment of something that hasn't even been through troubleshooting in the primary? Are y'all out of your minds? Our org had field offices in 7 battlegrounds and notched a 'W' in every single one...at about 5% of the cost of just what Crossroads spent (but again, I know those consultants get a nice commission on selling that national media ad time.) Even if Romney lost, at least some those guys made out like bandits. I know there are some people freaking about totals and stolen votes and this and that. But the fact remains I have worked many campaigns and I've never seen a GOTV operation work this smoothly.

580 I was a Michigan ORCA volunteer. I got the packet, credentials, etc. Also, my app worked, so no technological issues at all. My problem was that the basic premise -- we'll hear voter names as they're announced -- was flawed. In my precinct, and many others in my county, voters sign an "application for ballot," which they submit to a poll worker with their photo ID. No names uttered. Also, no voter lists posted. Also, the entire registration list (not my printout, but the official list) was housed in a single, small laptop, so there was no hope of peeking over anyone's shoulder to see names. I guess no one had checked whether this was doable in Michigan?? That's human error, not technological error. And, BTW, they assigned two of us to the same precinct.

581

As someone who's been playing the "ground game" since 1967, I find Ken's remark to be very naive.

I recount my own experience of Orca at http://tinyurl.com/b7ndjy3

582 I've been trying to tell people: Obama & Co have the social networks sewed up. We're still using rotary dial phones and Rolodexes. If we don't start catching up, the Republican Party is going to go the way of the Federalist Party, the Whig Party, and the Bull Moose Party. And the country will go the way of Greece, Cuba, and Zimbabwe

583 Did no one proof read ...

I am constantly amazed at the basic typos on company websites; esp given that there are *free* plugins for firefox that will spell check apage for you (the free one I have doesn't have a big dictionary; I assume for 50 bucks you can get a good one..)
Today, I was looking at the website of a company that sells 5-20K equipment used mainly in the packaging industry; a real B2B site.
They had a picture with numbers in the picture (1) (2) (3)
The numbers were (obviously) on the wrong things in the picture
I could go on and on; I'm not talking about poor design, where it takes 5 clicks to get a pdf manual (or, god forbid, the product page doesn't have a link to the manual !!)
I'm talking basic spelling

584 These dipshits can't even run an election campaign. Why do you think they should be allowed to run a government?

585 Interesting read, considering the voting numbers it would appear Romney wasn't ready to lead the nation based on his organizational skills. It's rather shocking to read the Pres. Obama blaming comments, but then again, this is how Romney lost. Blaming instead of leading. I love the nuts an bolts of campaigns, and within this page lies many reasons for Romney's loss. Lets start with Romney not taking this very serious, maybe he thought he was a shoe-in, but Hilary made the same fatal mistake as did McCain. From that point of, it's all downhill. I doubt any political talking head mentions community organizer with a sneer again. Based upon what I've read, accept your loss, find the mistakes within what you did and not what the other campaign did, and attempt to fix it next time. Why worry about the other side, when your army is sitting around with the hands under their seats doing nothing? Strike list are proven, why they needed updating to an untested system is actually kind of not smart. The old ways are sometimes the best, and in this case; it would appear the old way was much more useful. Considering how close the race was in some states, every voter you missed was a vote being counted for the other side. Guess what, the other side won doing it the old way. Being organized.

586 I also volunteered, but never received a packet or how to access the "app".  I presumed someone else was chosen instead of me--something my husband thought was probably the case. I thought I saw a lady using it in my northern VA precinct, but now I'm not even sure. I never was told I wasn't needed, but I'm not sure if they expected me to go somewhere instead of my assigned precinct (something I could've easily done; the school right next door also was being used as a polling station). These comments are making me sad. Better communication would've helped, especially with how close it was in this county.

587 I can sleep better at nights knowing we still have a competent manager in the White House. http://www.nationalmemo.com/even-fox-news-admits-it/

588 I was a volunteer for Project ORCA and have worked as a paid employee of a campaign in the past. What I see as the problem is that these campaigns are heavily staff by 20 somethings. While they have good intentions and often good ideas there is too much immaturity. By immaturity I mean that they treat it too much like a student body election with all that "rah rah" stuff and don't have the worldly wisdom, discernment, and life experiences to run it more professionally.

589 Wasn't Romney wearing his magic Mormon underwear?  I thought the power of his magic underwear would have resulted in a landslide.  In 2016, it's time to trot out Sarah Palin.

590 what the hell??? not a regular poster here...but i can't believe what i'm reading...worked in IT for over 30 years...IT-101 Manual, Page 1...sentence one..test, test, test and test again...make the damn thing fail and fail again, until you can't make it fail anymore...and even then say a damn prayer and cross your fingers before moving any kind of IT application into the production environment...then, if it fails, your ass belongs to the boss....who the hell were his IT folks???..this is just incredible...or did he even have any real IT people..???  i know, i know...lowest bidder...

591 Oscar/588, I thought Obama's staff was full of 20-somethings?

592 I'm a Democrat, but stories such as this make me uncomfortable about the future of our republic. Although I'm glad 'my guy' one this time, it's unhealthy in a two-party system that one party is (by many measures) so much more 'in step' with the electorate's demographics than the other, that the out party is rendered obsolete. I like boisterous, open debates which won't happen if the parties continue to be more and more insular. I sincerely hope the Republicans next 'project get-out-the-vote' is much more successful JohnE, thank you for taking the time to be an involved citizen.

593 The first word to mind is "unbelievable," but then ... no, it's completely believable. I believe every word of it. If you look at the deepest scars on Rupblicans, they are never given to us by Democrats. They are ALL self-inflicted wounds ... every last one of them.

594 Similar issues in Colorado email to pick up credentials for attorneys and no documents no response from emails Our turnout though was 95% republican. Not enough to make a difference in Colorado

595 I confess that I was one of the stupid "volunteers" that brought a Droid t a knife fight.

596 We built a client tracking system that enabled access even at accident locations outside urban areas. That meant being able to work off-line when no comms available. After looking at brand M and brand 'i' we went with IBM. Geographically separated, self-replicating servers: check. Load sharing and balancing: check. Develop systems that use a web interface: check. Run on tablets, smart phones of most brands: check. Can operate off-line and then update automatically when comms available: check. This stuff has been around since 2009.

597 Everyone knows most geeks are lefties, has it occurred to anyone that this may have been geek sabotage from the beginning?  Seems to have worked pretty well in the analog man's campaign.

598

I signed up.  I've watched polls every election since Ford-Carter, taking the day off to sit in what usually are the most democrat precincts.  RNC would hand you list of felons that were registered to vote...usually only four or five names.  After an hour or so of talking with the poll workers I would casually ask if these people had voted yet.  It's really quite simple.  The poll workers know those people or at least know their families and sure enough one would get up a few minutes later and go to the phone.  Never...ever saw one of those people vote. 

I had a phone call from Romney Campaign (Robo) stating that I would be receiving email with all the information to get certified and trained.  It never arrived.  So I went to work.  Second election in a row that I have not poll watched.  McCain campaign refused to use volunteers in the polls, at least that is what they told me; they wanted only paid lawyers to work as poll watchers.   Rove's second campaign was something to behold.  I was in a precinct off Myrtle Avenue in Jacksonville Fl;  I was not calling in names that had voted I was reporting vote totals every two hours via phone.  At the end of the day I reported the actual votes.  Bush had 97 votes out of that precinct out of 1800 cast. Rove knew who had won Florida about 30 minutes after the polls had closed.  He had people reporting in just about every precinct in the state. 

599 700 volunteers in Boston HQ wasting their time on orca. Telling people in VA , NH, CO, Ohio and Fl to keep trying to log in on a system that would never work. Plus the managers of this disaster didn't want to find solutions to overcome the problems. They just said keep trying..it will work they should be fired..

600 I worked the war room at headquarters in Boston and ORCA was an epic fail. It was epic fail from the moment we got there and that was clear. We were supposed to be there at 4:30 AM. Only one problem. The garages to the TD Garden were closed and hundreds of cars could not get in until 5 AM. 45 minute wait to drive 2 blocks. That was the first clue. 2nd clue, got in, grabbed breakfast and went to go set up computer. Could not get on internet. That happened all morning. NO connection to the net in the garden even though we were supposed to be "live" the minute we sat down. Some of the 11 swing states we were monitoring never got connected tot he interactive site. When we finally did and the problems in the field started presenting themselves we were supposed toe "solve" them, but so complex that we had no idea what to say. When people's registration records on their devices did NOT match their paper records of voter lists from the get go, you knew that this was going to be an epic fail. Supposedly this had been tested with up to 3 million users at one time with no problem, but with 800 people in the garden trying to get on the site all at the same time, the servers at the garden thought that the system was being attacked and shut down. It was 11 AM before they figured out how to solved this problem. Talked to many of my poll watchers in Northern Wisconsin and they were ready to do ANYTHING to get Romney elected, but thought that for the most part their day was a colossal waste of time. When people tried to get into the phone system to call in their voters tabulations, they couldn't do that either. System too busy and couldn't absorb the loss. Many poll watches were sending in alerts about fraud and people walking in never having registered and allowed to vote on site. Who knows what happened to all those complaints. The "technical" people that were there to help the OCRA volunteers and solve problems had absolutely NO idea what they were doing and couldn't answer a single question. Most of them were wet behind the ears know nothing college students that could not answer a single question of any kind any time. And they got irritated when it was clear that they were about a smart as the side of a barn door. A bunch of us started going "rogue" and just started telling our field contacts what to do over the phone. We knew that by 2 pm the entire system was a epic failure and that no valuable data had been collected at all and it was clear by 8 PM that Romney was going to lose big. Rich Beeson, national campaign director was pacing in the lawyer bull pen looking like he has going to toss his cookies ..... and he looked this way starting 3 hours before the polls even closed. I loved hanging out with my fellow Romneyites for almost 24 hours but this was the most colossally stupid waste of time and money in the history of presidential politics and if these "kids" that were involved in this thought they were going to work in Washington and save the country, God help us all. If Romney actually knew everything about this entire plan and had seen what we saw, EVERY SINGLE IDIOT that was involved in this project from a development and execution standpoint would have been fired !!!!! I hope all of them have to stand in the unemployment line and eat crow because not one of them deserve a job.

601 Actually I thought about this. I actually wonder if this wasn't a trojan horse launched by Obama that unfolded exactly as planned by Obama and that all these technological wonderkids weren't actually plants by the Obama team into the Romney camp to create this epic fail. Too many things went wrong from the very start and I seriously believe that this may have been sabotage. And if it was it was VERY EFFECTIVE.

602 I'm a (very) liberal Democrat (and, yes, I voted for the WINNER), and I'm resisting the strong temptation to do a big fat schadenfreude tap-dance here. But most of the posters here seem nice enough, and this really isn't my party (!). So I'll just say... Any chance that any of you good folks will consider the possibility that this apparent royal f--- up, versus the Obama campaign's super-competent and successful GOTV effort, along with the Repubs's whole "We're going to win despite those Democrat (your illiteracy) polls from that suspiciously pointy-headed Nate Silver et al," when actually Nate Silver et al exactly nailed both the electoral and popular vote... along with the whole our guy's "positions" on the  economy are going to carry the day even though no economist with any a) objectivity and b) competence thinks his "plans" for the economy make any sense... etc......

...Basically, do you think, possibly, that all of that might indicate you're playing for the wrong team? That reality-based politics--rather than self-aggrandizing, disdainful, "the 47-percent are losers, we're the only folks who matter, we can bend reality to our will, if we say it's so, it's so" politics--is the politics with a future?

I know this is crazy-talk amongst this crowd, but do yourself a favor: Force yourself to read Paul Krugman's blog and columns for a couple of months. Read even the posts that make fun of people like you. But especially the ones that offer data-based economic analysis, with charts and graphs and stuff. Keep in mind: Reality Rules.

I know it's hard. Most of us choose our politics in no small part for the emotional charge we get from rooting for Our Team. I get that. I'm the same way. 

But I also think there's just a lot of denial of reality on Team Republican, for starters on economic policy (and on what's actually happening in the economy). That matters.

One more thing: FOX News is not a reliable source of information! However much you enjoy it, THEY MAKE CRAP UP! A LOT!

BTW, to commenter no. 3 above: Obama in 2012 got about 3 million (5%) more votes than McCain got in 2008. Yeah, case in point. You guys really need to stop listening only to each other.

603 I was one of the volunteered and I felt incredibly foolish for signing up. I liked the way they kept track if I'd taken the 'training' and kept sending me emails but they didn't bother to send a thank you email after spending 15+ hours at the polls with a crap 'app'! They listed a local area code number but it was redirected to Boston. If there truly a legal issue we were all SOL because whoever was on the help line was as unprepared as the we were. Did I mention that I tried to use the phone method and that never took either. When I finally logged on there was no record of it. Still a little irritated 3 days after the fact.

604 I was a Project ORCA volunteer in Ohio and I actually thought it worked pretty well, although I can't vouch for what was done with the information once it was uploaded to Boston.  I was only notified of 2 conference calls prior to election day.  My precinct assignment was made by someone with a local area code - I'm not sure if she was at one of the Victory Centers or not.  Since I didn't think I could be at the polls for the entire day I was assigned to work from 1-7:30 (I was told another volunteer would be there in the morning).  My packet and credentials arrived in 2 separate emails on Sunday.   When I arrived at the polls I realized there was no way I would be able to hear voters' names as they checked in - I wasn't allowed to sit that close to the poll workers.  In Ohio the voter lists are posted at 11am and 4pm, so I went through the 11am list and checked off names on the list that was sent to me.  At around 4 the other volunteer returned and we were able to double-team the updated list.  She had a smartphone and the app did lock up or crash at one point, but I was still able to call and input the voter ids on my basic cell phone.

It's disappointing to hear that so many other people had major problems with the system.

605 For the record (re/my post #602), Obama in 2012 beat McCain's 2008 total by only a million-plus votes, not 3 million--my bad, I mis-read some web-stats. But he did beat McCain's numbers!

606 Well, imagine the mess that would have ensued if Romney had been given responsibility for running a bigger operation, like the USA.  I guess we can consider ORCA as the beta version of that experiment, which I guess will never go into production now.

607 I voted R since I could vote back in 00'. I liked Bush, I was okay with McCaine, but then commes Mitt. WTF? Did anyone take a look to see how the Mormon corp runs things? Because Mitt is exactly like those elitist, entitled, deeply mysogynistic, and narcissistic ass clowns that run their voluteers into the ground (be it missionaries, or regular members) and then blame the little guy for messing up. I am not saying all Mormon men are like this, but mitt certainly is. He literally believed he had a divine mandate from god to save the us, then fumbled the exocution. I doubt very much that he will try to take responsibility for any of it. Give me a call in 4 years when you have an actual HUMAN candidate and I will consider rejoining the party. (and while your at it, can we please get politics out of religion, my vagina, my herbs, and my friends bedroom? Seriously, drop that obnoxious shit and I will come crawling back!)

608 I have to agree with 602:  doesn't it occur to you that the reason Republicans haven't been getting my vote is because I don't want what you're selling, and I don't like the way you sell it? 

You insult your own intelligence when you argue that this result was because you didn't have an effective GOTV or that your candidate wasn't conservative enough, or even that the demographics are against you.

We're not stupid; we haven't seen enough evidence that tax cuts will get us out of this mess or that unfettered free enterprise can cure all ills, don't agree that the end of the world is nigh and that this is Obama's fault (or that he's a Muslim or a Marxist or anything close to it), don't want to further a rigid, intolerant and backwards-looking social agenda, don't want an erosion of the separation of church and state, and on top of this are really, really tired of listening to y'all shouting at us and each other 24/7?

I've found it interesting lately that the comments I hear from Republicans sound almost verbatim like what Democrats were saying in 2004.  But the world didn't end then and it won't now.  I'm actually more open to discussion since I realized this, but on the other hand I'm no fool and I won't be treated as such.

I want to like you.  Try offering something new and positive that will actually make most of our lives better, okay?  You can start by working on your bipartisanship.

609 Maybe the developers who created Orca got Romnesia

610 we are a center left country now. It's a country that is socially liberal and the Republican party is going to have a very difficult time capturing the Presidency anytime soon. The next Republican president will be a social liberal by todays standards. He will support gay marriage. The year will be 2024.

611 This is probably an exception. I took the video training. I did get the mail packet. My creds were in there. I was fooled by the http URL but finally figured out there was no https redirect. Realized that it was not an app but a website. Wasted hours gettting it to run. Nevertheless I showed up at the precinct at 6:30 iPAD and chair included. The obviously DEM poll workers welcomed me and said I didn't need my chair. Use our more comfortable one. They let me sit right behind the computer sign in terminals. I started using the "app" and entered voters in on the iPAD for 12 hours. I know it was working because at slow times I switched to drudgereport and then re-signed in to ORCA. The "voted" totals increased as they should have. A few times during the day ORCA people called me on my cellphone to see how everything was going. I have no idea if they were doing anything with my entries. It crashed a few times during the day but the "voted" totals always recovered when I signed back in. I had a bad feeling when there was no one showing up after 4pm. I expected waves of REP voters to show up after being called by ORCA. I was stunned at the final election results. I went into a deep funk.

612

Mmmmm, mmh! Oh, that's good schaudenfreude! Let me lick your salty, salty wingnut tears, ohhh, oohhh, tasty!

So if there was any doubt about it at all, this election debacle with ORCA should have put it to rest for all of you mysogynist, racist, jingoistic douchebags, God Hates Republicans.

That's right, God hates you for all your un-Christian thoughts, words, & actions. So get a clue Republicans, this is how it's going to be from now on, remember 2016 is just around the corner, & when it arrives I'll be saying Hey, GOP, BOHICA!

613

Your post is sad and rather poignant, John, but to be honest, what the fuck did you expect? You were working for a candidate who was utterly and demonstrably politically inept, and he'd been proving that to everyone who listened to and watched him for the past six months.

There were all sorts of indications: his gaffes when he was in the UK before the Olympics in August (you don’t insult your hosts, even if you think they are not ready for/not interested in the Olympics); his “47%” speech in Florida (didn’t anyone think to check the smartphones of people attending the fundraiser? Didn’t Romney realise how easy it is to record private conversations?); alienating Hispanic voters with his support for “self-deportation”; his continued support for halfwits like Akin and Mourdock, when he should have dropped them like a hot brick; his pick of Paul Ryan as vice-president (another right-wing numpty); and his continual changing of his message (was he a strongly conservative right-winger, or a consensus moderate?). And those are just the obvious ones.

And apart from Romney’s own incompetence, didn’t you look at his most vocal supporters and spokespeople and wonder what the hell you had signed up for? Check them out: Fox News, the Tea Party, the Drudge Report, Erick Erickson and RedState, Slug Limbaugh, Palin, Sheldon Adelson, Trump, the Koch brothers, Karl Rove: what a fucking collection – and you were working for them and promoting their message!

Romney was their responsibility, no matter how they want to deny it now, because they outshouted whatever moderate voices there were in the Republican Party, with the result that Romney was the best of an appallingly bad bunch of candidates in the primaries. IÂ’m a Brit, and I have to tell you that even conservatives on this side of the pond were genuinely gobsmacked that Republican voters were choosing between numbskulls like Gingrich, Santorum and Romney.

I repeat: what the fuck did you expect, when you signed up for Team Romney?

614 sorry about the weird formatting in 613... mistake to cut and paste!

615

John (605 & 602) I don't know where you got your statistics, but here are the actual popular vote totals from 2008

Totals

Obama - 66,882,230 (53.0%) 365 Electoral Votes

McCain - 58,343,671 (46.0%) 173 Electoral Votes

A difference of more than 8.5 million votes. Romney got more votes than McCain, Obama beat McCain's numbers, & Obama definitely had a mandate back in 2008 from the electorate, if he isn't awarded one this time around. Remember Electoral College wins are amplifications of the Popular Vote.

616

THIS WILL NOT BE PROOFED FOR GRAMMAR OR SENTENCE STRUCTURE....THANK YOU FOR OVERLOOKING AND READING MY THOUGHTS.

I enjoyed the article John E, thanks for an honest account of your day and yes very possible if  the GOP had better systems in place the results may have been different.  Honestly, I don't think the results would have changed any, and I will explain why later.  Okay, so I am going to b e speaking only for myself and sharing my viewpoints; if they offend or annoy anyone, allow me to say in advance thank you for giving me your power and putting so much energy into what a single person thinks. Instead of getting mad use that energy to make sure a hungry child does not go without food today (is it the child's fault  they don't have any food?)  If you answer is yes, well...I hope if you are ever in need  there are not people like you around  you depend on because they will watch you die before offering a hand. 

Moving forward, as for the election personally I have never wanted to be labeled as a Repulican or a Democate...why?  Because I am neither, not an independence nor what have you.  When deciding to vote I first look upon the person, the man or woman and who they are, what kind of feeling I get from their works.  Frankly, Obmam is a good man, seems to want to do the right thing for this country. It's people and the rest of the world.  I am sure he plays some political games as they all have to at some point.  However, he was never bought and paid for by a few very deep pockets of trillionaire or maybe they were just  billionaires, who knows it is all a secret.  How can anyone vote for someone who sold the White House from the get go and SUBSEQUENTLY proud of it?  OF ALL THE STUPID THINGS ROMNEY SAID AND  THEN TO ACCEPT  SUPER PAC MONEY MADE MY MIND UP AT THE FIRST CONFIRMED TRUTH.  FORGET THE  OTHER LESS THEN INTELLIGENT THINGS HE SAID OR DID. SUCH AS: THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS ISSUES, GAY RIGHTS (WHO BUSINESS IS IT WHO YOU LOVE OR SLEEP WITH? MOST OF THE WORLD PROPBLEMS WOULD BE SETTLED IF WE WOULD JUST STOP TELLING OTHERS HOW TO LIVE THEIR LIFE AND WORRY ABOUT OUR OWN. THE government DOES NOT NEED T TELL US WHAT OUR STANDARDS ARE, PEOPLE WITH MINDS THINK!) CHILDREN RIGHTS, IMMINGATION REFORM, ANIMALS RIGHTS, GUN CONTROL (PLEASE WHO NEEDS THAT MUCH FIREPOWER?)  TO GIVE R  CREDIT, HIS MIND WAS TRUE AND LASER FOCUSED ON T/BILLIONAIRE RIGHTS WHICH WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES OF HIS CANDIDACY.  Romney only has the interest of his social group and corporations.   is that in the best interest of the whole, the country and it's people? The money both sides spend would do so much good in areas needed, but instead they put it back into the pockets of the super rich.   Thoughts...iF I had the money,Super Pac,    go into small rural town and do an Oprah and change the future of America one mind at a time , one  at a time and most importantly oneheart ata time.

617

John:

I was working the call center in the Boston Garden.  Would love to have you blog on my views -- it was nearly as frustrating being there with 1000 other volunteers that were trying to support you guys in the field.

Walt

618 This was an interesting report to receive on ORCA and the comments have been illuminating.

I'm a liberal-leaning independent and it was clear to me right off the bat that there was nothing behind Romney other than clean-cut face, artfully greying hair, and a bright smile.  I was paying attention to his speeches and what I heard was a one-note candidate who tailored his remarks on all other issues to try to appeal to whatever crowd he was addressing - even if those comments directly contradicted things he had said somewhere else a day or two before.  He stressed cutting taxes and growing jobs when anyone with half of a working brain quickly realized that a) cutting taxes would benefit him the most, and b) he really has no practical history of job creation other than creating firms that dismantle other firms - and that's not job creation.  And this isn't even addressing the GOP's platform that deliberately marginalized anyone who wasn't a Christian white male. 

You can argue that that's not what it did, but as a white American woman who has lived all her life in an ethnically, economically, and racially diverse area, it was clear to me that the folks I saw around me in my every day life weren't the people the GOP wanted in their world, and whose lives they would do their darnedest to restrict.  That was my perception of this GOP campaign, whether or not it was the one intended.  And even though that was pointed out many times during the course of the campaign, it was never addressed nor rectified; allowing the only conclusion to be drawn that it was the correct perception.

Hearing how truly screwed up Romney's election targeting campaign was makes me really think that this country dodged a bullet - because as someone earlier pointed out, the folks running his campaign would have been the ones appointed by him to positions of political power after his inauguration.  Thinking about what has been said here, the ORCA fiasco was just a microcosm of the Romney campaign's lack of understanding of the larger voting population.  It sounds like with ORCA they didn't even understand their own volunteer base; as was mentioned, there are a lot of older poll watchers who aren't necessarily the most technologically-savvy people on earth (not knocking them, I've got them in my family) who can't flip on a dime and cope with a lot of new digital techniques all at once. (Not to mention having to print out that .pdf file would tick a lot of them off because they'd have to use that much of their own paper and ink - lol.)

My advice to the GOP?  Jettison the racist elements of your party.  They have only done you a disservice and are marginalizing you more and more.  Jettison the fundamentalist Christian influences in your party platform.  Being a Christian doesn't make one any more or less of an American patriot; ethics and morals aren't dependent on a particular religion.  Jettison the misogynistic elements of your party.  Women are the majority and we know what is best for our own bodies; we don't need men telling us what we should do with them.  Stop with the "my way or the highway" attitude.  Go back to the principles that once made your party great.  Provide the country with alternative ideas to the Democratic ones; we are a diverse nation and the only way to move into the future is if we take the best ideas from both parties and mold them into one that will benefit the most of us while harming the least.

Really listen to ALL the people and understand that compromise is the key, not an anathema.

619

Reading the recounting of this disaster and most of the comments (yes, I have the day off) reminds me why I keep shocking people by saying that elections do not guarantee anything except mob rule.

Taking the high road intellectually does not equate to winning over the majority of registered voters - who have been raised in schools taught largely by teachers who graduated from liberal arts colleges stocked mostly with professors who are either openly or closeted socialists - voters, many of whom were barely raised by parents who abdicated their parenting roles in favor of their pursuit of the Joneses rather than the Cleavers.

The above is today's example of a run-on sentence, class.

620

In POLITICS, "there are NO Accidents".. This election went just as planned by the people who financed both oblunder and romney. (duuuh!!SAME PEOPLE).

If you believe this was jusst "Tech Errors" I've got some Oceanfront Property in Phoenix I'd love to sell ya!!. Mebe a Bridge to Nowhere? You could do worse , having thrown the election by ignorance.

 

621 Morans... we wuz robbed!

622 "I'm like a broken record, but it shouldn't have mattered. Not this time in this election. Not with this guy. We should have been able to run a damn martian and won."

We should have. Romney won the white vote, the married vote, the married women vote, the white woman vote. We lost the election with minority voters, who apparently cared less about $6 trillion in debt and double-digit unemployment among minorities and more about the guy who 'cares'. Obama got 95% of the black vote, and about 105% of the vote in Philly and Chicago.

At least with a martian we might have done better with those who have illegal aliens in their family.

623 "In POLITICS, "there are NO Accidents".. This election went just as planned by the people who financed both oblunder and romney."

Someone missing a tinfoil hat?

Sure there are. Prior to Hurricane Sandy, Romney was up in RCP poll averages. He dropped under Obama only in the last 5 days. WE might be talking about President Romney had it not been for that.

624 TO: All
RE: Heh

Sounds like stuff going on inside my own county's political party.

Members of the Executive Committee—few having much of an idea about computers, systems and reliability—wouldn't do diddly to implement systems that could have helped with local elections.

Indeed. Some of them actually BLOCKED implementation of some systems. And the day before they might have been useful, I got calls asking to set them up. To which I replied....has So-and-So FINALLY allowed for us to establish a 3G account with AT&T? So-and-So was—for unknown reasons of very strange paranoia—afraid of giving the phone company our EIN so we could open a 3G account for data transfer.

We're talk'n SERIOUS self-inflicted-wounds here.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away. -- Proverbs]

625 P.S. And the answer to my question about So-and-So authorizing the establishment of a 3G account with AT&T by releasing the EIN was....

...."No".

Dumber than dirt.....

626 I was a poll watcher for Obama in NV in 2008, and back then we had Houdini, the precursor to Orca. It also crashed, so we just used the strike lists, which the local OFa office had of course printed for us. Anyhow, Obama crushed in NV, so it didn't matter, but my point is, we had this technology four years ago, so it's pretty funny you guys were only just screwing it up for the first time. Maybe when you join the 21 st century on tech, as well as women's right s, and gay rights, and healthcare, and everything else. I'm not holding my breath though.

627 People view the Republican party as the party of business. Romney's biggest plus was that he was a good manager and had owned an run a successful business. There's absolutely nothing about the way his campaign was run that proves that in any way. The deal with ORCA is just more proof that they were making peewee mistakes when they should have been playing big league ball.

On the other side Obama has now proven twice that he knows how to hire people and get the job done. Yes, they were really thrifty. The field offices were run on a shoestring and outfitted with all kinds of donated furniture. No money for yard signs. But they got the job done and spent the money where it was needed most.

Obama's people did the best job they possibly could of managing both human and financial resources. I would have expected nothing less than that from Romney's campaign.

628 I have been laughing at you losers non-stop since Tuesday. ORCA is in microcosm what a Romney admin what have looked like. You believed your own hype and got conned by the conmen. Too bad so sad!

629 Well, nobody will read this, but...as a thinking person with a minor in cultural anthropology in active use since '61, and a broad technical education, it seems the Romney campaign totally blew it. I suspect it was the exclusiveness of the inner circle, and its age and mental rigidity (Mormons, really?) that generated most of the mistakes. (It can be rigidity that makes you talk to everyone as if they never heard you talk to anyone else. The massive internet and smartphone penetration is killing the liars and panderers off, one by one. Now Obama is going to be able to counteract the voter suppression, and hand over his massive and effective GOTV machine to the party in 2014. If he takes the House, and gets a supermajority in the Senate, the Republicans can kiss their already retreating ideals a long goodbye. Republicans have some old and good ideas, but the main idea seems now to stack the cards in favor of exploitive business men and corporations. There will be a drumbeat of this forever.

630

As another person that was in the Garden on Election Day, poster #600 is on the money with his comments.  I would like to add a few things. 

On the night before the election, the Boston volunteers were asked to come to Boston for an in-person training, with laptops.  It was perplexing that none of us were asked to take out the laptops to test the system that night.

We had been told in conference calls that the JumboTron would be utilized as a resource for information throughout the day.  It was used for nothing until Fox News Channel was put on in the evening. 

Communication about problems was sporadic and often vague.  Maybe being more open and upfront about the problems would have been alleviated some of the frustration and confusion. 

One Task Force member said that it felt like we were in a glorified "call center"

When asked who was #1 in charge "on the floor," none of the volunteers we asked could give an answer. 

I believe there were only 2 IT people there for support.  I could be wrong, but that is the impression I had. 

The first sign of a long day, after the parking garage debacle, was during our "wake up" calls.  Second person on my list, he was clearly still asleep, and not happy to recieve a call from me before 6am.  There was at least one other person on my list that called back, having no idea what I was talking about. 

My main method for communication was text messaging from my own cell phone, since in VA people can not be on phone in polling places. 

After polls had started closing, many of us were searching the web for info from Drudge, Fox, CNN, Boston.com, etc.  We were told to stay off the web because that was impacting the system. 

There was never any announcement that we were free to leave.  Some left around mid-evening.  Once the race was called, most, if not all, of the task force left. 

I believe the idea was good, in theory.  The fact that there was not a true test run before hand is crazy.  I appreciate that members of the Task Force had their parking cost covered, and that we were provided with continental-style breakfast, a box lunch, and dinner which included chicken, beef, salad and other items.  We had also unlimited access to soda, coffee, water and other drinks - no alcohol, unfortunately.  Snacks and fruits were also available all day.  Call those things the icing on a stale cake. 

In no way does the breakdown of the ORCA project affect how I feel about Mitt Romney as a person and a candidate.  I was a supporter long before he had aspirations of becoming President.  And, I can imagine he has already said "the buck stops with me" as far as taking accountability for this.  I don't think it is fair to primarily blame him for the failure, he put trust in others that clearly dropped the ball. 

I was expecting some type of "thank you" e-mail after things had settled down on Wednesday or Thursday.  As of today, still no formal "thanks" for my efforts with the project. 

I hope that this adds a little more to the picture of what was happening in the Garden that day.

631 AS someone who read all 620 comments, and as a independent observer (ie UK not American citizen), some points. 1a) rather than blaming ORCA's failings on perfidious democrats, why not China, Russia or al Queda? 1b) is this not a symptom of the failure of the free market- ie cheapest is best? Surely a competent businessman OR politician would have researched the company? 2) Registered voters, does not include voters entitled to vote. 3) Their is a business saying, most business managers are promoted one level above their competence. APPLY IT TO POLITICIANS AND WALL STREET BANKERS. 4) So much evidence that the GOP was gerrymandering voter intentions. And their is plenty of evidence. You can claim Obama used fraud to get votes, but the fact is, all the evidence pointing to fraud, is on your side. See point 2. Think this, you do not care to vote, as long as you live in a democracy. But if someone threatens Democratic choice, you give a damn. Voter suppression by the GOP energized opposition in the lazy. 5) Most importantly - this was not a pro Obama vote, but an anti Romney vote. Take from this, what you will. I would say, it was an anti republican vote, associated with Romney, because he could not escape the evangelical vote. PUT SIMPLY. You candidates can be shown to be utter ideologues, by anyone (I.e. Liberal media) pushing wedge issues - ie abortion. And they went further pushing against agreed issues, like contraception is morally OK (in the vast majority of opinion). Those opinions turned of voters for the republican party, then Romney as a "moderate".

632 You make it impossible to post web links on your site with this CMS. Trust me, I've tried 10 different ways and I'm pretty savvy at this.

but go to Targeted Victory's site, look at the devs on "our team" and ask yourself whether these likely Obama voters really worked for Romney as well as they could.

633 The numbers for votes received are as follows:
Virginia: Bush(2004): 1716959
Virginia: McCain(200 : 1726053
Virginia: Romney(2012): 1745397  vs Virginia: Obama(2012): 1852123


Ohio: Bush(2004): 2859764
Ohio: McCain(200 : 2501855
Ohio: Romney(2012): 2571539 vs Ohio: Obama (2012): 2672302

Florida: Bush(2004): 3964522
Florida: McCain(200 : 3939380
Florida: Romney (2012): 4162174 vs Florida: Obama(2012): 4236032

Colorado: Bush(2004): 1101255
Colorado: McCain(200 : 1020135
Colorado: Romney(2012): 1094435 vs Colorado: Obama(2012): 1180573

My take. Loss is not due to GOTV, other than in Ohio maybe.

634 Could have received better value for money if the project had been outsourced to somewhere like Israel or India or even China!!

635

Looks like somebody's looking for a scapegoat. First off, do you bring your driver's license with you when you drive? Then why wouldn't you bring your POLL WATCHER CERTIFICATE WITH YOU TO WATCH POLLS?

Every poll watcher book, pamphlet, class, pdf and notice contains a warning to bring your certificate with you.

Secondly, my materials didn't have two separate items in the checklist for "Chair (if allowed by poll manager)." In fact, it looks like this supposed copy supposedly quoted above was photoshoped. Notice that for every item in the checklist there is an equal distance between the box and the item to be checked off-except for the second "Chair (if allowed by poll manager)." Nice try.

Thirdly, everything worked fine for me because I'm not braindead. If you had a problem then you're braindead or YOU DIDN'T WORK HARD ENOUGH. So, when you next want to look for a scapegoat, Look in the MIRROR!

  

 

636 We had Obama GOTV door knockers 4 times. I did my own canvassing of the neighbors as I lived in a 90% Florida county and not one got one visit from a Romney supporter. And this guy said he was a good organizer? The better campaigner won.

637 #39 wrote: "If Obama has destroyed America like we expect him
to, the middle will come. If he hasn't we're not winning anyway."

In other words: "Obama has destroyed our country! We won!" This is why your side did not win.

638 Well, this is what happens when your party demonizes scientists, technologists, and other assorted smart people. You're welcome to come over to the blue side, where reason, sweetness, and light prevail and where we even have cookies. And apps that work.

639 It's s shame that the GOP has a hard time with facts and seeks to create different reality for themselves. If the GOP isn't careful, they will be the 3rd party in 20yrs.

640 "47 It seems like it has the possibility to be a good idea. It really needed to be tested before. Why uneducated terrorists understand the idea of dry runs" I thought the point of the article was that you didn't....

641 So, Romney, the much-vaunted businessman and manager who was going to turn things around for the country was actually trounced by a -gasp- "community organizer"? Oh, the indignity...! Guess it was a good thing for us that Mitt's "machine" didn't get set loose running the country. And they really had you all convinced it was going to be a landslide...Did you ever stop to consider, maybe that is not the only lie or distortion you're accepting as truth? Maybe this should give you an inkling that perhaps, some of your perceptions and opinions are incorrect. Honestly, I can't fathom that some people really believe that President Obama is: a muslim, a socialist, or someone eager to "destroy America"! If you want to ever be taken seriously again, you've got to be members of the "reality-based community". Rejecting the tactics of of those like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove would be a start.

642

Maybe Mitt's vaunted business management skills aren't really as hot as advertised.  Running technology amateur-hour like this in the middle of your most important political campaign is actually quite telling.

643

Would you really want someone running a campaign that inept in the position of the presidency?? It boggles the mind. Top that with the campaign fundraising scandals/alleged fleecing by consultants, the etch-a-sketch nature  of the ever-changing positions of the candidate, day after day yet more lies and deceptions--and you have the most disasterous campaign in modern times. It went on so long and just bore into the brain.  

 

644 I have read that Orca was a Microsoft technology based moblie-enabled web site created by an "unnamed" consulting firm.

Does anyone in the know feel the need to provide us with the name of this talented firm?  Perhaps we can let them be the only American firm allowed to do business with Iran?  They could be encouraged to write their drone-control software.

645 Got an email from Mitt and Ann thanking me for my contributions. I replied, saying: "Dear Mitt and Ann Romney, We gave you money and we supported you in this fight. We thought you were such a great executive that you could run a great campaign, and lead this country back. It turns out you relied on lousy campaign consultants who promised far more than they delivered. That's what sunk the McCain campaign and you fell into the same trap. I am a software architect in the healthcare industry. We deal with life and death issues so we test and retest our software under all conditions. Your campaign was fighting for the life of our country and your people released critical campaign software the day before the election, They didn't stress-test the software, they didn't train the people who were supposed to use it; sending people a 60 page PDF the night of the election does not constitute training. Your people weren't even smart enough to figure out that smart phones have cameras, which means they aren't even allowed into polling stations in many states. I talked to people who volunteered for your campaign and they couldn't do poll flushing because of Orca's failure. I'm disappointed you couldn't appoint better people to run your campaign. We watched your progress through the primaries. You used your financial muscle to destroy your competitors. But, come the main event, you followed the failed McCain template and played softball. McCain might have had an excuse, because Obama had no record. But you knew Obama's record and associations and you didn't hammer him on them. Very disappointing. They play hardball. You needed to bring a machinegun to the baseball game. We are disappointed you lost. Actually, we are devastated; not because you lost, but because Obama won. But, you gave it everything you had, and despites the missteps, and Hurricane Sandy, you might have been our president. Saddened, Pat"

646 It seelms incredible this thing could be so minsmanaged:

1)   It smells like on November 5 they were still writing code.  Software projects are quite unpredictable relative to shipping date.  That mens that like in this case have a deadline written in stone you <b>must</b> have a plan B.  If the software you have asked for has nopt ben shipped <b>and</b> tested <b>and</b> stress tested by at most deadline minus one month then you should go with plan B.  And when I say tested I am not referring only to software not crashing but about usability..  Actually if your pockets are deep enough you should run two projects so if one fails then you still have the other.  Two projects <b>and</b> a plan B.

2)  It appears like there was no attention paid to the organizational aspects of the project.  This si a gross blunder since in fact they shoulod have been treated before the first line of code was ever written like they did in Cobol times: it is to the computer part to mold itself in the physical word not the opposite.  To begin with if you are requiring sixty years old volunteers read a sixty pages PDF in order to use your system then you are doing something wrong.  Still more wrong, if it is only for a one day effort meaning that people will be uinable to learn by doing

3)  Given that a presidential election is in fact fifty small elections there was no need to have a national server.  It not only made  for a single point of failure it made more likely the system (or its connectivity) would be unable to handle the load.  It would have been far better to have fifty servers.  One for each state.   And it not even expensive.

4)  When the fate of your country is at stake you don't trust Windows

647 I am still floored that so-called republicans could vote for a muslim over a Morman.

I would tend to lay some of the blame at the feet of Ron Paulnutties': on election day the old fool was saying there was no difference between Obama and Romney.

648 I don't buy into the geek conspiracy theory. It's not like this was the only area in IT where we were behind. The data-mining from the Obama campaign, by all of the accounts I've read, was way better. They had accurate information on their voters and then they used that to initiate face-to-face contacts or Facebook contacts from friends. Moreover, they tested everything, from the software to the messages that they delivered, before it ever got out into the field. They also did a dry run of their GOTV weeks before the election, just to make sure that not only the backend was working, but also to confirm that it worked for users. Why we didn't learn from four years ago is beyond me. We've had an ocean of money from donors (both Romney and the RNC), and it's inconceivable that this wasn't priority one, especially with a guy who's been campaigning for six years and saw how his predecessor lost.

649

Darwinism in action.

If you can't run an election competently then it's just as well you lost as you couldn't run a country ...

 

650

I agree with Robin.  If this was any indication of how skilled team Romney was, we all dodged the bullet when he lost. 

Can you imagine them in charge of anything important? 

651

If anyone is still reading down here -

 

I want to affirm some of the other, less-taunting comments by liberals that say we want you guys to do better; we want a real opposition party.  I may have come to different conclusions than you on how we need to address our problems, but more that my individual stance I strongly feel that better solutions get made when there are opposing philosphies IF AND ONLY IF both views are subject to reason, reflection, and evidence-based revision.

I know that large numbers of people that voted for Obama actually think this same thing.  We want you guys.  We want ideas to be held up to scrutiny, if that scrutiny is being made in good faith.  We want alternate points of view.  We want to be challenged on the measures we use to grade an idea.

And this is why there actually is no liberal conspiracy.  We just want you to stop being crazy, and start proposing something besides tax cuts as the only solution.

Please.  We miss having you at the table. Just like it's more fun to have an intellectual discussion with someone who stymies you than scoring points on an idiot, it's no fun to win the votes when it's like shooting fish in a barrel.  A very rape-y barrel.

652 It brings this 62 year old, highly educated white MALE no end of joy to hear the complaints of the Romney ground forces about how they were laid low by the techno-incompentence of the GOP GOTV apparatus. Contrast this with the highly effective, tech-savvy Dashboarders of the Obama campaign effort who marshalled their forces nimbly, quickly and highly personally to motivate many small $$ donors and passionate voters to help our man cruise to victory in 2012. Take heart, RepubliCANTs, you've got 4 years, well actually about 14 months, given the ever-briefer campaign cycle to try and gt it right for 2016. Work these glitches out and your only problem will be fielding credible candidates. Marco Rubio?? Condoleeza Rice? Paul Ryan? I'm laughing already.

653 I have a few observations, but I'm an African-American Democrat, so you don't need to bother reading what I say: The right-wing obviously spent far more time trying to prevent Obama's voters from voting (trying to cancel early voting, making registration drives more difficult, requiring identification) than they spent trying to assure that reliable Republicans would get to the polls. If the Republican Party had given 10% of the foresight to its own GOTV that it gave to frustrating Democratic GOTV, Romney might have been elected president. Maybe Romney's ORKA fellows were full of crap because the were motivated primarily by the money they'd get as consultants (regardless of the electoral outcome) rather than by a sense of commitment to the populace and their party. Maybe the IT consultants sounded and seemed to you like unregulated, incompetent Brownie Katrina-worthy money-grubbing sales pitch rip-offs artists because that's exactly what they were? They were motivated by consultants fees and not by a desire to effectively coordinate your efforts. Romney's qualifications were puffery. Just as you discovered on Election Day, (and as the whole country would have discovered had he been elected), Romney did NOT have the ability to supervise even ONE effective national GOTV effort for ONE day, much less all of the agencies of the Federal Government for four years. I'm sorry you guys nominated such a lousy candidate, because the country deserved to have a competent Republican executive to choose from on Election Day. But, I'm happy with the results and all's well that ends well.

654 I have to tell you, the failure of ORCA is probably the most fascinating story from this entire long campaign. To this lifelong liberal, ORCA is everything that Mitt Romney represents that we're opposed to: Top-down management, disdain for the troops, outside contractors who swoop in, baffle you with their bullsh!t, and get massive bonuses for a failed and late deliverable. Everything about this project reeks of fail from start to finish. The author did an excellent job explaining why this was no way to run a mission critical software/network operation. I want to ask the bigger question though: if ORCA made no difference to Team Romney on the final results, what was its real purpose? Republicans don't put the effort into GOTV that Democrats do, because most Republicans tend to be reliable voters. Indeed, "the squeeze wasn't worth the juice" (said by a Romney advisor over why they didn't organize rallies and buses for college students in early voting states). Was the real aim to destroy the local-level Republican intelligence so the Romney troops could swoop in again to run things "for" you in 2016? Looking at what happened during your primaries and with the constant rules changes, I really think you guys have had your Party stolen from you in a classic Bust-Out. Let me add my voice to the other Dems who said we do need a functioning Republican Party, both with good ideas that voters can choose from. I hope you find your way out of the woods, because your current message that everything can be solved with tax cuts is demonstrably wrong, and your current coalition has pulled you over the cliff from the weight of the crazies. You're going to have to renounce the racists, the pro-Rape segment, and the homophobes if you ever want to win a national election again. Look, my dad was a lifelong Republican, I am not unsympathetic to you as a Party. I despise what you have become though, and hope you can recover.

655 Comment 647 stated: I am still floored that so-called republicans could vote for a muslim over a Morman. I would tend to lay some of the blame at the feet of Ron Paulnutties': on election day the old fool was saying there was no difference between Obama and Romney. This is what you must evict from your Party if you ever want to attract the center again. "Obama is a Muslim" is demonstrably false, but certain people repeat it over and over la la la la I can't hear you! as an article of sick faith. Voting against your own nominee because of his religion doesn't make anyone look any better. The Republican Party can join the grown-ups' table again when this sort of offensive statement is met with the disdain and disgust it deserves. Seriously, it does not help you if your aim to sell yourselves as a Party of Ideas. Sure, you have Ideas. These, however, are extremely Bad Ones.

656 If it's any consolation to you, ORCA had better graphics than VoteBuilder. Obama phone banker here. I voted for Reagan, but after living in Australia for over 10 years I'm a devoted democrat now. Yes I paid high taxes there but I received something for my money. For one, no worries about quality health care. I long for those days. Plus, my neighbors were literate. Something to think about. Obama's ideas are not as scarey as you think. Fewer people being stuck with unpaid bills when someone goes bankrupt over hospital bills, people are free to start businesses because they don't have to be concerned that they need to be on a group plan if they have preexisting conditions etc. Really, health care and education are worth paying for.

657 The moment I heard about ORCA, I immediately thought sabotage. The other issue with this election is the polls being so off, you know Brett Hume saying "there's something very wrong here" before the election. Well, I think the two are tied together. We all thought turnout would be super high because of 2010 shellacking, the Mittmentum compared to crowds of 2k for Obama, the early voting stats which had R's up huge when they normally aren't early voters, the Chick Fil A phenomenon, and the early voting lines were long everywhere as they also were on election day. So, where are all these missing votes? Well, thanks to ORCA sabotage we can't look at the strike lists and prove more people voted.

658 I think we should thank God Almighty that Obama won. The jerks who created this mess would have nuked Oklahoma thinking it was the capital of Iran. Next time: A GOP candidate with AT LEAST three brain cells.

659 As a Democrat - this is beautiful, thank you so much.  It almost makes the pain of 2000-2008 go away.

660 actually, i'm not a Democrat, I'm a member of the Communist Party, but I vote Democrat because it's essentially the same platform....Especially in 2008 and 2012.

661 Really, health care and education are worth paying for. Posted by: Lisa s at November 12, 2012 11:58 PM (tqvO5) Lisa....we've spent Trillions on HealthCare and Education....and that was before 2008. Now I just hope Obama keeps spending more and more because then we can bankrupt this filthy excuse for a nation and get on to installing a more Stalinistic system that is more for the people....and less for individual Freedom.

662 Don't blame HP, they are a corporation and as such are "people too"

663 Somewhere there must be a résumé whose work history includes: · Southern regional manager of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina · Regional manager for BP, Gulf of Mexico · Replacement referee for NFL during union strike · Project manager for ORCA vote-tracking software

664

On Fox News Channel, Karl Rove certainly acted as if something was wrong when the election was called for the President-----> and Rove went into real time drama, unwilling to believe "the numbers."

And did we hear Rove, who heads a Super Pac, say that he was in touch minute by minute with the Romney campaign chairman in the state of Ohio??  ....aren't Super Pacs not to coordinate with campaigns per Citizens United Ruling? 

all things considered: IF THE FINAL POPULAR VOTE COUNT HAS MITT ROMNEY AT 47%  ---  IT WILL BE deliciously IRONIC

 

665 too funny. have a cry.

666 The 2008 Romney primary campaign was better organized than this mess.  John McCain relied on printed precinct lists which worked rather well.  I used one.  This year I paid for material (sign, bumper stickers, etc.).  It took week for them to arrive and only after repeated emails.  The Romney website had poorly coded donation boxes.  Romney was the "technician" with no real vision he could express.  As a "technician" he couldn't get his campaign gears to mesh.

667 "477 I never received my packet. I also signed up for Lawyers for Romney and never heard back. We need to better organized if we plan on taking this country back." Take it back from who? The technically advanced?

668 272:  "Costco cashier asked if I wanted to donate a dollar for something or the other.

"Ask Obama for the money."

My new mantra."

Brilliant.  Just a brilliant move, Corky.  Having worked in retail, I can guarantee you that the Costco cashier is not impressed with you in the least little bit, unless it's in associating "Republican/conservative = Stupid whiny jerks that I want nothing to do with at all."  As a liberal, I say to keep up the good work!

Seriously, comment #654 nailed it in the first and last paragraphs.

669 After reading through most of the comments by the Romney supporters who thought that ORCA was going to GOTV for the Republicans.  There is a saying in the world of computers that I first heard in 1974 at an ARMY computer operators course.  "Garbage in Garbage out", guess there really isn't anything new in the world.