Took in the ORCA training, received an assignment to a polling place in West Palm Beach County.
The election eve conference call was intended to run down the ORCA process and motivate folks to use it and keep Boston updated as to possible legal infractions in the polling places. Well at least I think that was what it was supposed to accomplish.
I dial in 3-4 minutes before the start time, it rings busy. I speed redial it about 20x over the next 15 min until I get a recording that says "The conference call is over. Thank you for participating." So I started calling the limited number of folks I knew in Boston, Washington and Tampa to figure out - when are we getting the download of this app, which we need to start using in about 7 hours at the polls? Every number I could dial had a blown-up voice mailbox. Couldn't reach anyone. So I e-mail about 7 Romney people asking for the proper contact so I could actually get ORCA loaded on my phone. No responses.
I google "ORCA/Romney" and find a Huffington Post article written by a reporter who had crashed one of the training conference calls on ORCA several weeks ago. He published information in the article that the Romney Campaign hadn't even distributed to me (a PDF with download instructions - but useless because I needed a particular URL and specific password). So I'm starting to get concerned about midnight Monday when I see that I am learning more about my ostensible function on Tuesday from The Huffington Post than from the campaign I have contributed to and volunteered for.
Then in a Facebook post I dredged up, I saw comments indicating that the software would be downloaded at 5:00 am election morning. Great, I go to sleep for a few hours and check e-mail at 5:15 am. No e-mail.
I call the "Command Center" number for ORCA and get a recorded message "Call us after 6:00 am". I call after 6 and continuously until 10 am, when I finally reach someone. In the meantime I hit Dunkin' Donuts to get treats for the poll workers and get to the precinct I was assigned to at about 3 minutes before open. Easily 300 people already lined up. Inside are 3 GOP poll-watchers for each precinct registration table. Roughly 3x what was necessary. Nice to have a surplus of volunteers, but use them wisely, not ultra redundantly in a limited number of places.
When I finally get through to the Command Center at 10 a.m. I ask about my ORCA app. I'm getting this hemming and hawing from what must have been a 25 year old in Boston. He just couldn't bring himself to admit the app crashed and burned and said "uh..er...it isn't necessary for you..uh... to remain at that polling place." So I get in my car and started calling to find out where I was needed. Every hotline/command center phone number I was given had melted down, you couldn't reach anyone.
A few minutes later I started getting this stream of calls from locations apparently all over the country (LA, Buffalo, Norfolk, NYC, Cincinnati, etc.). It was the beginning of a torrent of calls from the Romney HQ personnel in Boston and Washington who had to resort to using their personal cell phones to communicate with people in the field. So, for example I'd get a call saying go up to Riviera Beach to precinct XXXX and see so-and-so about thus-and-such. Then while driving to Riviera Beach I'd get a call saying "No, turn around and get down to this particular precinct in Boca", and then en route to that I'd get another new instruction to go in an entirely different direction. It was a bunch of folks in Boston on their personal phones making decisions which had no central control, logic, or, in the end, purpose.
Some of the lawyers who were working in the Romney Campaign with me on the ground in Palm Beach County are heavy hitters who bill at $475/hr. My opportunity cost is not that large, but still I volunteered several days and contributed $. To take this crew of volunteers and use them in such a disorganized, pointless way was a crime. It was a f***ing Chinese fire drill all afternoon.
I know it is a hard thing to do to run a campaign with loads of volunteers and all the temporary paid workers, but this was a joke. The vaunted Romney talent for organization and business leadership was nowhere on display in the conduct of the campaign operation I saw here in South FL.
I have two theories on what happened:
1. Some young crew of tech folks in the Romney HQ was overly impressed with what they could do to create the "killer app" for the campaign. They were so impressed with their great idea, they forgot to beta test it, and like a lot of software, it didn't work in its initial form. There was no contingency plan, and these young, tech enamored folks cannot improvise in the old, lo-tech world (which is still what the majority of campaign logistics are.)
2. There is the possibility of sabotage of the app and the phone system by folks antagonistic to the Romney Campaign, maybe even by some plants in the campaign who were functionally Obama operatives. Perhaps Romney's nice-guy Mormon perspective is less aware of the potential for back stabbing and dirty tricks like these and that left the door open. Just sayin'.
Maybe the ORCA thing wouldn't have made any difference even if it was functioning properly. I don't know how to assess that.
Net-net - a total f****** disaster.
Well GOP is in a bit of a mess. All the divisions we have had with the GOP-E needed to be fixed or still need to be fixed before we can take on the left. Then we also have to focus on getting out the vote efforts on election day. And we need more media outlets like The Blaze TV which will expand soon to U-Verse and is trying to get on cable companies as well.
Two months isn't enough to get something together, especially since they're strapped for cash at the beginning, given the all-out sprint (i.e. expensive ad blitz) near the end of primary season. Party-building should really be the party's function. Where the heck was Reince Preibus?
Agreed.
Except that I think the Chinese are much better organized.