My Day with ORCA

[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…

[Belle22]

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 up 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, we 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.

[Unc1e_Ivan]

Though your questions don’t really apply to the dart I threw at you, I’ll answer ‘em anyway...

Question #1: No, but interesting that you point out my FR sign-up date under this callsign, as if seniority here means anything. As a military retiree, I was previously a little too busy down-range nuking gay whales for Jesus to bother with FR... but even as a non-registered FReeper creeper, I don’t recall having read any of your sage political campaign advice here BEFORE the election. You’re still avoiding my point that you’re just Monday morning quarterbacking...

Question #2: See above and previous post.
Question #3: See above/previous post.
Question #4: ditto.

As to welcome to FR... Meh. Too little, too late by all of us here to stop the Commie train this time around, if not forever...

I was glad to see that even Mr. Robinson came around and saw that the lesser of two evils really was the lesser of two evils:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2920626/posts?page=1

God help us, especially since 6 Nov 2012, to remain a free republic...

Wishing you and all here at FR a Merry Christmas.