Watch this video first. Was shot Monday.
Update: It was never beta-tested.
The Ace of Spades argues the Romney campaign's vaunted ORCA project became in reality a Charlie Foxtrot. Read on. Ouch:
"Project ORCA is a massive undertaking – the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election."
Pretty much everything in that sentence is false. The "massive undertaking" is true, however. It would take a lot of planning, training and coordination to be done successfully (oh, we'll get to that in a second). This wasn't really the GOP's effort, it was Team Romney's. And perhaps "unprecedented" would fit if we're discussing failure.
The entire purpose of this project was to digitize the decades-old practice of strike lists..." Rest of post
Read the rest of it. I bet a consultant got a nice fee for providing this service. Breitbart picks up the ball and runs for some more yards with it:
"A source within the Romney campaign agreed to share his reflections on Project Orca with Breitbart News:
It's easy to point fingers after a loss and I wouldn't normally do it, but consider what happened.
Project Orca was supposed to enable poll watchers to record voter names on their smartphones, by listening for names as voters checked in. This would give the campaign real-time turnout data, so they could redirect GOTV resources throughout the day where it was most needed. They recruited 37,000 swing state volunteers for this.
I worked on the Colorado team, and we were called by hundreds (or more) volunteers who couldn't use the app or the backup phone system. The usernames and passwords were wrong, but the reset password tool didn't work, and we couldn't change phone PINs. We were told the problems were limited and asked to project confidence, have people use pencil and paper, and try to submit again later.
Then at 6PM they admitted they had issued the wrong PINs to every volunteer in Colorado, and reissued new PINs (which also didn't work). Meanwhile, counties where we had hundreds of volunteers, such as Denver Colorado, showed zero volunteers in the system all day, but we weren't allowed to add them. In one area, the head of the Republican Party plus 10 volunteers were all locked out. The system went down for a half hour during peak voting, but for hundreds or more, it never worked all day. Many of the poll watchers I spoke with were very discouraged. Many members of our phone bank got up and left.
I do not know if the system was totally broken, or if I just saw the worst of it. But I wonder, because they told us all day that most volunteers were submitting just fine, yet admitted at the end that all of Colorado had the wrong PIN's. They also said the system projected every swing state as pink or red.
Regardless of the specific difficulties, this idea would only help if executed extremely well. Otherwise, those 37,000 swing state volunteers should have been working on GOTV...
Somebody messaged me privately after my email and told me that North Carolina had the same problems -- every pin was wrong and not fixed until 6PM -- and was also told it was localized to North Carolina.
The problems with Orca appear to have been nationwide, and predated Election Day itself....
Before the election, there was much fear-mongering on the Democratic side about the Republicans’ supposed plans to suppress turnout among Obama voters. After the election, GOP strategist Karl Rove accused the Obama campaign of “suppressing the vote” by running a negative campaign against Romney that kept voters at home.
The truth is much worse. There was, in fact, massive suppression of the Republican vote--by the Romney campaign, through the diversion of nearly 40,000 volunteers to a failing computer program.
There was no Plan B; there was only confusion, and silence." Rest of story.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Romney Campaign Foxtrots
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16 comments:
You think they would have done a test run?
You think they would have done a test run?
"The Ace of Spades has a very interesting post on what a Charlie Foxtrol the ORCA project was for the Romney campaign."
What kind of lead sentence is that?
Where is that FAT idiot...that thinks is so smart, Haley Barbour...bet he would know how to help...PARDON ROMNEY!!!
Given the record turnouts, I'm not convinced a srike list would have been all that useful.
I think that both sides did very well in getting their bases fired up.
The GOP may have overdone the rhetoric at the expense gaining moderates and independents.
The GOP alienated a lot of women and Latinos and gays. And, it wasn't so much the campaign itself(though the primaries weren't helpful) as the thousands of local extremists all over the country.
But,it wasn't just the hateful, paranoid,racists comments of bloggers and bizarre emails during this campaign by those claiming ( including on this site to be for the GOP) but Trump and Bachman and Beck and Akin, Murdock and company women's issues did it with their own words.
And, Romney's video was deadly. People tend to believe what is said in an unguarded moment is more credible that what is said when you know everyone is listening.
And, the economy wasn't worse. Romney campaign had to campaign on " I could have done better and will do better". So , it became , " which scares me more, the deficit or the extreme right?"
Thanks to Norquist, the GOP was stuck with " no taxes" when 65% of the Americans polled think the wealthiest should pay more not less.
The GOP underestimated how disgusted the public is with a lack of compromise and that the unfortunate remarks of more than a few Congressional leaders and the Norquist pledge shift much of that blame to the GOP.
The GOP embraced the fanatics and then couldn't control them. The Dems did the same thing in the 60s and 70s will equally disasterous results.
A Perry or Santorum or Bachman candidacy would have looked like McGovern and what's his name in the tank.
I'm just glad the Ole Miss protest hasn't gotten much attention. How embarrassing that our college students can't accept the results of a democratic election. It'd be different if it were rigged or stolen, but it wasn't. Awful to see.
I don't know how they could have done a test run, except for a much smaller test on a local or state election, but then, IF it worked, they couldn't use it until 2014 or 2016. Now they know the package they have doesn't work, it is unclear whether they know why it didn't work, so they have to start all over again anyway.
Smart people would have had apencil & paper operation running side by side with the new, untested, unproven, and (we know now) unreliable system someone swindled them for.
Ah, how about distribute 100 apps to each of the swing states and test it in a dry run in advance of election day?
Oh, yeah, and test it again and again and again.
Think Mississippi is always going to be some safe reliable Republican-voting state, think again folks. If the state Dems ever find somebody smart enough to help them, they will put together the lists of voters from this past week's election and start making some inroads again. Yes, MS did not rank 50th this time, it ranked as the 20th most votes-cast state for President Obama.
Here are the second 10 closest states — by percentage — from election night 2012, along with the winner in parentheses.
11. Minnesota: 7.6 percentage points (Obama)
12. Georgia: 8 percentage points (Romney)
13. Michigan: 8.3 percentage points (Obama)
14. Oregon: 9.45 percentage points (Obama)
15. Missouri: 9.6 percentage points (Romney)
16. New Mexico: 9.9 percentage points (Obama)
17. Indiana: 10.5 percentage points (Romney)
18. South Carolina: 11.3 percentage points (Romney)
19. Arizona: 11.55 percentage points (Romney)
20. Mississippi: 11.7 percentage points (Romney)
Of those states, Romney won six, while Obama won four.
They did do a beta test of system; but it was overwhelmed on election day. What is left out of this story is that the Obama campaign had tried to institute a similar, but less sophisticated system in 2008, and it crashed.
The idea is a great one, and recruiting 30,000 + volunteers to work in the precincts is unprecedented. In this election, it wouldn't have made the difference; but conceptually it has massive benefits once captured and useable at state and local elections.
I think most, if not all the smart folks in MS who can pull this off favor the GOP.
Think Mississippi is always going to be some safe reliable Republican-voting state, think again folks.
Oh, yes, Donna's wet dream.
Keep convincing yourself of that.
November 9, 2012 10:07 AM blah, blah, blah, blah. Grandma cut-n-paste troll makes her daily appearance.
It crashed in 2008. Didn't crash for them in 2012, did it?
One comment from computerworld.com:
Karl Chopelas
I was an ORCA volunteer as well, and I manage several large-scale DBs at work. I reported several times throughout the day that no data was coming in from various states. The state managers told me it was a localized problem and that 90% of the users were logging in and it was working. I knew it wasn't true I tried to get to the programmers, but my credentials wouldn't allow me in that section of the building. The whole thing is a text book example of theory vs. real workd management. It was all theory.
Theory v. real world management, eh? That's what Romney was supposed to be better at than the President. Supposed to be.
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