Project ORCA catharsis
By 8:30am I was burnt out, trying to catch names from the two election officers’ computer screens, and, knowing that my precinct is run by good, by-the-book folks and that no detectable fraud would occur, I chose to comfort myself with a second, hot breakfast. (I left feeling deeply embarrassed in front of my neighbors, who run the precinct every year, and who saw what a failure Project Orca was and now have the sneaking suspicion that I don’t trust them to run a fair election.)
So, when I got to my breakfast spot, I tried to enter the names of those who had voted, roughly 25% of the precinct list by 8:30am, and the program crashed my Blackberry halfway through. Once I rebooted the program, I found that the names I had registered had been lost, and that I’d have to start anew.
Blowback
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/08/Orca-How-the-Romney-Campaign-Suppressed-Its-Own-Vote
El_Terrible on November 9, 2012 at 1:55 PM
when will we post story after story about all of the Obama voters who gleefully share their multiple voting experiences?
gatorboy on November 9, 2012 at 1:57 PM
To quote Winston Churchill in the aftermath of the Anzio debacle:
“I had hoped that we were hurling a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale.”
ORCA or no ORCA, 3 million of us did not vote. That is inexcusable and unforgivable.
Rixon on November 9, 2012 at 1:58 PM
Is it better to believe we lost because of a piss poor GOTV, or because we’re finally outnumbered?
El_Terrible on November 9, 2012 at 2:00 PM
Should’ve gone with an iphone…
/s
Seriously- we lost in 2008 with McCain. Lost in 2012 with Romney.
Could we, perhaps, end up with a 2016 GOP nominee who’s, you know… conservative?
Just a thought…
cs89 on November 9, 2012 at 2:04 PM
This.
changer1701 on November 9, 2012 at 2:05 PM
If this is a clue into how Romney would have run an administration,……
portlandon on November 9, 2012 at 2:06 PM
I volunteered for Orca, there were many problems. I would also note that my district turned out more R’s than we had seen in a very long time. Orca failures need to be hashed out but the failures of the program don’t explain everything that happened on Tuesday.
OFA managed to turnout massive numbers of lab-created voters in swing states yet MN re-elected Obama by a pretty thin margin. This was a targeted program that worked on building voters first. We spent a lot of time scoffing at Julia and the bridal themed emails but they had a purpose.
Can they build these voters anywhere? I am sure of it. Would we have managed to bring Romney within 1% (closer than Bush) in Bucks County PA had OFA concentrated efforts to build new voters? I doubt it.
msmveritas on November 9, 2012 at 2:10 PM
I think it is clearly a clue on how Romney likes to run things: Top-down with a heavy emphasis on top. A centralized authority that ultimately is out of touch at the local level. I am reminded of his strong-arm attempt to change the primary rules at the convention making the entire process much more centrally controlled.
NotCoach on November 9, 2012 at 2:12 PM
Could be both. The fact that a Harvard MBA couldn’t figure out how to do native iOS/Android apps with $1 billion in 2012 (while his opponent is personal friends Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt) shows a complete lack of knowledge of the current American mainstream. Remember the dud app for announcing the VP Ryan pick from Romney? The Dems own the culture, media, tech, and I think they just got to 51% voters as well.
sauldalinsky on November 9, 2012 at 2:14 PM
We lost because:
- corrupt LSM
- teat suckers
- uninformed and stupid people
- RINOs
- those in charge cannot (or will not) get out a conservative message
Honestly, if people cannot figure out it’s election day and get their lazy, fat butts to the polling station, then why are we doing it for them? Do we wipe their butts for them too?
We say we’re the party of personal responsibility. Isn’t it personal responsibility to be informed and vote?
This just tells me that if having a babysitter is the only way to get people to vote, then the country is even stupider than I thought, which is almost impossible.
kim roy on November 9, 2012 at 2:14 PM
I work under people like this. Insulated from reality.
However, I think Romney sincerely overcame this by atleast October. His speeches seemed sincere. I think the campaigning and meeting the people and seeing the faces of those effected by Obama got through to him.
But it was too late. And his infrastructure turned out to be incompetent at the least.
portlandon on November 9, 2012 at 2:21 PM
Exactly. I waited four years to cast my ballot against the miserable failure. If my fellow cons/GOPers didn’t feel the same, that’s on them.
changer1701 on November 9, 2012 at 2:34 PM
The picture on the ground will appear differently in 4 years (and maybe in 4 months).
The fact is, we’ve all been exaggerating when we talk about how it’s been worse than the Carter years. It needs to get that bad so people understand that when Republicans talk about liberal economics, it’s not just a talking point on the long list of BS that both parties fling. It’s deadly serious.
Unfortunately, it looks like Boehner is trying to stand firm on tax rates, probably whipped into it by his big business buddies. That would be moronic, letting the GOP be Obama’s punching bag for two years. The people support higher taxes. Give the people what they want.
HitNRun on November 9, 2012 at 2:35 PM
I’m fairly involved with politics, news, elections and this is the 1st I’ve ever heard of ‘orca.’
But, then again, I live in a cave in very red Missouri…
locomotivebreath1901 on November 9, 2012 at 2:46 PM
Please, I’ve been in IT since 1989. That is not a clusterf*ck, that is sabatoge, from the inside. First to avoid a cluseter, thaere’s massive testing before hand. If a cluster actually does happen during critical deployment, a “stand down” order is issued while everyone goes to their battle stations, fixes the problem, and then you’re off again.
NOBODY w/ANY experience whatosever in a real-time cluster of this magnitude would TELL people all is well, because that delays resolution.
Geez, if this really WAS a cluster, who was runing this thing? My 12 year old nephew? Who ENTRUSTED that resp to him/her?
Or, the campaign was infiltrated, much more likely.
JustTruth101 on November 9, 2012 at 2:49 PM
Both … and more.
GOP lost for many reasons and they all had a cumulative effect on the losing outcome …
1. Bad Candidate with a history of flip flopping; a centrally planned healthcare system named after him; a record of views not consistent with the base and self-proclamations that “my views are progressive”. This killed a lot of enthusiasm – a lot of people didn’t see much difference between “RomneyCare” and “ObamaCare” or … not enough differnce to bother to vote.
1a. Wall street “one percent” candidate. Raised with a silver spoon in his mouth – no one could identify with this guy.
2. Demographics also played a role, because the GOP Ayatollahs have done a piss poor job in outreach. You better DO something about this Hispanic problem quick.
3. Media – obviously didn’t help Willard a lot.
4. GOP Social Views. Look guys – I thought you guys were for a federal government with LIMITED powers? So why are you non-supportive of drug criminalization? Gay Marriage? Abortion? Why not let your STATES handle those issues and have the GOP national platform simply maintain that those issues are up to the states?
5. Poorly run campaign – and I REALLY MEAN A POORLY RUN CAMPAIGN …
A. Willard’s own people told him he had this in the bag based on internal polls. As a result – he looked more bold and confident than Obama in the last few weeks. Turned out his internals were a bunch of hogwash.
B. GOTV was totally screwed up by the campaign and the RNC poked the pooch on this too.
C. Campaign didn’t “hit” Obama on Benghazi. Didn’t hit him on ANYTHING except the economy. The entire strategy was “rope a dope” – smile while the media is kicking your ass and hope you can outlast them – it doesn’t work.
D. GOP Ayatollahs who don’t know how to allocate resources. This is the third election in a row that John Cornyn at the NRSC has blown out his ass – how many more before you guys decide to fire him? How many millions spent on Snott Brown’s loss to a fake indian? You had Todd Akin make a misstatement in MO and the whole establishment just sh1t all over him within hours – pounding their chests and proclaiming that they would never support him with one dime of money. He lost by a thinner margin than Snott Brown did. Had the Ayatollahs stood up and poured some money into Akin – he probably could have squeeked by.
- Also – by the way – how did Reeces Pieces at the RNC work out for you guys? Not too good. He couldn’t even pull his home state over to Romney and they’ve been trending Republican for the last three years.
- Also, love how everyone will be heading over to Iowa now to kiss the ass of the Iowa State Republican Party – an organization that NEVER seems to be able to convince Iowans to vote for the Republican candidate. Remind me again why we suffer these fools in Iowa? We make a big deal out of them every cycle and then the whole state goes BLUE in November!
HondaV65 on November 9, 2012 at 2:56 PM
Can’t disagree with a lot here. Thank you for a useful post with a lot of GOOD ideas and commentary and less heckling and badgering. Why can’t you do this more often? This was well worth the time to read it and I’m going to read it again now. Seriously.
kim roy on November 9, 2012 at 3:12 PM
With Facebook, young people and single women are now reliable voters. They have been since 2008. OFA understood this and whipped our butt.
Young people were unreliable in the past because they didnt read HA, watch network news, or read the papers; so they were immune to PAC ads.
We relied on $1 billion of PAC ads to reach people that weren’t listening.
We need to put some real marketing people in place in the RNC. The RNC needs to own ORCA, not some candidate.
faraway on November 9, 2012 at 3:23 PM
Yes, we need state of the art GOTV and microtargeting which gets voters to join our team. Security must be state of the art, also, because ORCA was compromised. Once compromised, the backdoor is written into compiled code, you would have to reverse engineer it to get it out.
But back to the main point, the RNC need to finance it, protect it, and make it available starting in 2014. When should they start? Today.
JustTruth101 on November 9, 2012 at 3:32 PM
Who is “US”? We all voted. I guarantee every single person who comes here to comment (and is not a troll) voted on Tuesday. The people you are looking for voted for McCain/Palin and not Romney/Ryan, but that does not make them Republicans or particularly interested in politics. They stayed home because they didn’t care, and no amount of “but they should have cared!!!!” will make a hill of beans difference now or next time.
alwaysfiredup on November 9, 2012 at 4:20 PM
Um, no. Akin lost 51-39, while Romney won 54-44. We had a ton of ticket splitters. Akin could not possibly have “squeaked by” no matter how much money was poured into this state. Akin was a horrendous candidate and did real damage not only to the national ticket but we lost almost every single statewide race because of him. We lost great candidates for treasurer, secretary of state and governor because Akin espoused a “magical uterus” theory of rape. That’s crazy, feeds into the WOW meme and shows that he’s not just ideological to a fault, he’s also really, really misinformed. The GOP should absolutely shun candidates who threaten to topple the whole house of cards with one unfortunate piece of idiocy.
alwaysfiredup on November 9, 2012 at 4:28 PM
My bad. Akin lost 54-39. Yeah, just missed it by THAT much!
alwaysfiredup on November 9, 2012 at 4:29 PM