“You and Powell are our most faithful Republicans.”
Posted on 11/09/2012 8:18:19 PM PST by quicksilver123
I was one of those 30,000 around the country that wasted their day this past Tuesday trying to get Orca to work. Here in central Virginia, it was as bad as everything you've heard. I slugged it out with Boston from 6:30 am to 7 pm, and tried every way I could think of to make it work, probably for no good purpose.
The "app" itself couldn't be used ahead of time, I was assigned to go to one precinct on Tuesday, then got contrary instructions on Wednesday (the week before the election), was invited to call into a conference call on Sunday that I could not access, and tried to get into the system all weekend and even Monday night without success. Tuesday morning I got a call at 6:20 am from a young man in Boston who didn't know a lot more than I did about what was going on, and then 20 minutes later I got a call from a young woman who thought my name was Mike (it isn't).
Luckily I had gotten a certification letter in advance, so that wasn't an issue, but I spent hours working my ass off checking people off manually, while at the same time calling my contact in Boston, trying to use the back-up plan to call in the people who had voted, and finally insisting that someone take down the list of the people who had voted, which at first they didn't want to do, claiming they didn't have the authorization to do so.
Finally about 2 pm, Boston told me that I might be able to get the actual app to work if I went into "settings" on my iphone and "allowed" pop-ups. Once I did that, it all worked but I had the very bad feeling that it was too late and that no one would actually be able to do anything with this data I was killing myself to acquire. I agree that 30,000 plus people (I'm now told there were 37,000 of us from my Boston contact) wasted their time on the day we lost the election and the country.
I think ORCA lost us the election. This was a tactical error on the magnitude of the Maginot Line. Someone should be taken out and shot, hopefully tomorrow morning at dawn. It's all especially tragic because I'd come to realize that Mr. Romney was a very good and decent man, and would have been just the President we needed. Too late now…
It’s a dirty rotten shame they didn’t have a doggone DRY RUN... maybe that’s what they were trying to do on the call, but that’s making one untried thing lean on another.
I was an Orca volunteer and I don’t think it lost the election. I was working in NC, and my precinct was well run and we only had 1 dem in the whole place. The app didn’t work but I think that having 30K people acting as poll monitors was a positive thing.
There were two of us in the precinct doing Orca but we were also asking questions, checking the vote counts on the machines to make sure they were set to zero at opening. In the afternoon, the count of voters was off by 1 and it triggered a short investigation to find out what happened. If we weren’t there watching maybe they would have let that slide, it was only one vote. But I think they were putting in some extra effort and in 5 minutes the found the missing sticker and the tally was right on. Obviously we didn’t have enough watchers in PA and OH where I have seen many very serious stories of mass fraud.
Here’s what I think happened - Some republicans did not vote because they don’t like RINOS and some people don’t like Mormons. There was also serious fraud that I think played a larger role.
Two days ago I thought it was just a low conservative turnout but every day I’m seeing more stories of 99.5% votes in many precincts going for zero. every election has fraud, but when you have 44 precincts in PA with 99% of the vote going for a zero, then somebody needs to INVESTIGATE!
How could ORCA have lost the election? It’s a program, right?
I received a GOTV call from the local dude who was running for office. Told him I’m going right after Rush. He laughed. Point is, people were not just voting for a President but also for judges, Senators, dog catchers and Mayors. If they didn’t go out and vote for their local officials, nothing would have made them go out to vote for a President.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what ORCA is.
What lost us the election is that there are less moral people on this planet... and the voter fraud. Then there’s the people who “try not to get involved in politics”.
I agree with some of what you’ve said here, but I still think it was VERY poorly conceived and executed. In my precinct the Dems didn’t even show up (poll watchers), and sure, its a good idea to keep watch on the process, but in past elections we were able to watch for fraud AND pass data bank to local headquarters so they could work on turning out the stragglers. I don’t think that happened this time and why I deem it a massive fail
“The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA” AOS
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/334783.php
Please read.
Part of it could be that the City Of Brotherly Love has a lot of Neighborhoods Of White Hate (i.e. hating the “too white” Republicans) but yeah, 44 neighborhoods of perfectly Democrat zombies? If there was some way to announce “hey, if you were in this neighborhood and voted for Mitt, please call 1-888-DEMO-RAT on your Obamaphone because you done got gagged, sir or ma’am.”
Oh get over it. Did you 37,000 people actually think that what you were doing was going to have an effect on turnout??? Everybody from Washington to Bangkok knew the Nov 6th was the election. If they were going to vote then they would have showed up.
Only idiots like this think that some whale of a technology like this was going to win the day.
Let's say for some reason you find someone who hasn't voted by 4:00 and you call him. Who is to say that he is going to come down and vote the way you want.
They would have been better off having these people in the polls in the inner cities screaming bloody murder at all of the obvious vote fraud. Instead they are playing with their cell phones all day. No wonder Romney lost.
Speaking of money, did I see a story where tens of millions of dollars worth of FEMA cash destined for Sandy disappeared this week?
Let’s start there and see where that takes us....
I agree (well I only agree with one of your adjectives for Axelrod, but that’s a quibble).
I hate to use this word, but it is to me incredibly STUPID to leave a nationwide GOTV effort to the presidential candidate’s campaign. Even if he is Mitt Romney.
GOTV and “Truing” the vote is something THE PARTY should be doing ALL THE TIME.
How can you expect the temporary organization of a pres. campaign (a challenger, as you say the incumbent has 4 years to work on it) to handle this monumental task?
What about all the other republicans who were running? Were they also supposed to rely on this system?
Did this massive screw-up (I see that even in the denial they admit it crashed for 90 minutes on Tuesday morning, even if that was the only problem that would be pretty bad) cost us senate seats too?
I blame the MSM a lot for this loss, but I think if we are ever going to stand a chance we are going to have to do a lot more gressroots work with the party itself.
I know people say 3rd party, but I just don’t have any faith that will be successful. Look at the infighting now. We’d probably end up not with just a third party, but a 12th party, meanwhile all the lefties will win election as Ds.
Idiots, indeed. I don’t recall reading any of your sage advice on how to win an election BEFORE this week, Chip. Why don’t you can it and give Quicksliver and the rest of us a break from your whining.
If there’s blame to be laid, it’s on Romney for buying into ORCA in the first place, not on the faithful patriots that did what they could to try and help him win.
And what did you do during the war, Uncle Chip? Stay at home and not vote, I bet, like so many other “true conservatives”...
Anyway, thanks for your words of wisdom. I’m sure we all benefited greatly and that the Repubs will most certainly win it next time, thanks to your timely and informative critique!
“You and Powell are our most faithful Republicans.”
No, but it may have contributed.....
ORCA was likely hacked.......
Could it be that you are a Newbee that has only been here since September 14, 2012???
or were you one of the 37,000 who wasted their time on ORCA which would have been better spent with Tru the Vote???
or had you not heard of all the warnings of impending vote fraud???
or are you one of those who needs to be told to vote and who to vote for by some magical computer program???
BTW welcome to Free Republic!
I got my credentials and was able to get into the ORCA sit on my IPad at 5 am last Tuesday. All was going fine until I had recorded ~163 voters, about 90-120 minutes into the voting day. Then I lost connectivity.
A campaign lawyer came by the precinct around then and told me that many volunteers had never been able to access the program. I do think it was hacked, because later in the day, when I managed to get back in, the feature for searching names would respond to a search showing no result for that name, when both the ORCA registered voter list I had printed, and the polling place list, both contained the voter’s name.
I had to record that my husband and I had voted, because we voted absentee. Until the campaign registered us as having voted, I received repeated texts from the GOP reminding us to vote. When I got home, there were multiple phone messages and door tags - indicating an in-person visit - also telling us to vote. So in our case, that aspect of the GOTV worked as planned.
The question is, do GOP voters need more than reminders? Do we need to be gathered and bussed in to vote?
And does any of that matter when the Dems are using the census data to register and bus to the polls voters who may or may not be legal citizens or residents of that precinct?
I think the ORCA story is a red herring :) to offer an explanation for why Romney lost that does not focus on fraud. I believe that the Dems panicked and overdid the fraud, as the numbers indicate. Because everyone I know who I expected to vote for Romney/Ryan went out and did so. I don’t know any of these supposed millions who sat it out.
It was clearly fraud.
A couple here.
Bell22 wrote: I think the ORCA story is a red herring :) to offer an explanation for why Romney lost that does not focus on fraud
I’m intrigued by this possibility. Though is it also (or primarily) Romney/GOP covering up for Democrat fraud...
I don’t think Romney & Ryan were in on this. There’s nothing for them to gain and they put their families through hell.
If a “Captains and the Kings” group is running the world, how did Bush 41 lose? How did a business hater like Obama gain power?
I find it far more believable that the GOP does not know how to respond to Chicago/Alinsky Style fraud. The GOP continues to be terrified of being called racist, so Obama can continue to bully them. They won’t challenge him. The only one that doesn’t work on is LTC West.
I suddenly have no interest in watching Fox News anymore. After CJ Roberts’ Obamacare decision and this election, the country is gone. I wonder how Fox’s ratings will fare...
After the treatment of Petraeus, I’m more convinced than ever that Roberts was blackmailed.
//I find it far more believable that the GOP does not know how to respond to Chicago/Alinsky Style fraud
That’d be GOP-Romney willful negligence. For a few million dollars Romney could have hired a team that includes (for instance) the ex-FBI agent that infiltrated the Weather Underground; David Horowitz; some of Alinsky’s students turned right; a handful of prominent conservatives who’ve been active in Cook County for decades, witnessing Alinsky style fraud first hand.
Plus Mitt Romney is a genius capable of understanding anything and who will make maximum profit/accomplish any goal (sarcasm)
Most of the delegates at the convention were not nice people in the first place. RINO hacks. If they wanted to win Florida they’d have treated the Florida residents nice while they were there. They didn’t even do that.
The people I met whom the Romney campaign sent into Northern Virginia from Boston were kids. They’d admit that they didn’t know the area. But the Romney door knocking volunteers were pretty determined. And the only guy I’d seen around the area registering Obama voters was sitting at a table across the street from Whole Foods. The Obama GOTV didn’t make an impression on me AT ALL until I showed to poll watch on election day.
My experience was echoed by other poll watchers who called WMAL, a major DC radio station. They saw people who could not state their own address being “helped” by the poll workers. Is it 1234 Elm Street? They too believed people were being bussed in. They were registered or gave names of those who were registered.
In VA, they have to report it to the state board of elections, which will decide whether it wants to ask the AG to investigate. He can’t do it on his own initiative. I’m going to report my experience.
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