Posted on 11/08/2012 10:30:53 PM PST by stillonaroll
As Republicans try to explain their Election Day losses in terms of policy, tactics, and strategy, one factor is emerging as the essential difference between the Obama and Romney campaigns on November 6: the absolute failure of Romney’s get-out-the-vote effort, which underperformed even John McCain’s lackluster 2008 turnout. One culprit appears to be “Orca,” the Romney’s massive technology effort, which failed completely.
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Likewise, Twitchy recorded widespread real-time complaints and criticisms on Twitter by Project Orca volunteers. At one point during Election Day, the system had malfunctioned so badly that desperate volunteers wondered if the program had been hacked.
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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.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
It's public information, and the Rats know hot to use it effectively. We do not.
5:37 PM | Project ORCA, Romney's big Get Out The Vote initiative, has reportedly crashed. RealClearPolitics reporter Erin McPike tweets that Mitt Romney's Project Project ORCA app failed, so the GOP war room was unable to track the campaign's turnout operation. 
Obama campaign aide Michael Czin tweets this, in response to the news:
Anyone have a techno-FReeper ping list? I’d be curious as to their thoughts.
I think it might be illegal in New York.
Wow....just wow.
I don’t think Romney would hire stupid people.
Here in CA, I gave up doing GOTV because things have turned deep-blue Rat. They now have a super majority in the state legislature. The Republicans are completely powerless to block Rat legislation. :(
If THIS is what they're trying to pass off as the “reason” Romney lost then it really only explains what a lousy nominee he was in the first place.
This isn’t voter ID, though. It has to do with information gathering during the election.
However, the Rat GOTV efforts have proven to be exemplary. They have won the popular vote in five of six elections. Rat turnout has been excellent in 2008 and 2012, and part of the reason is getting people’s butts to the polls. The Rats do this a lot better than the R’s, and part of the reason is that they have made efficient use of modern technology. The R’s have not, and it reduces turnout, which is costly in a close election
By the way, Ronald Reagan never had a campaign website, but I think he would have one if he were campaigning these days.
My immediate thought when I heard about Orca was that I hoped it didn’t go the way of their mobile app for announcing Romney’s VP pick. Remember that one> They had people download it and it turned out to have an embarrassing typo on it—then they never sent out the announcement of the VP pick on it at all.
Especially if they really did run it out of Boston.
I’m referring to the process of a party or candidate finding people who are inclined to vote for them, making sure they are registered to vote, and making sure they actually vote. It is crucial in winning elections.
Yep, and I can confirm the story.
The system was a total flop and wasted much manpower that could have been used to get out the vote using more traditional methods.
I could not get the app running until 2 pm and then only intermittently. In both emails and in an online Q&A session I asked them if they were going to let users do a trial run and check the system and the data base out and there was no reply. You don’t assume tha a massive nationwide computer application and software is just going to work without any testing or useage.
The entire instruction set was a .pdf of three cell phone app screens. The app was not available until early in the morning on election day, so that was your first look at it. It would have been a failure even if the communications link worked because no one saw it until election day. I consider myself IT-savvy and I couldn’t get it to work - why did they think poll watchers, who are frequently tech-illiterate retirees, would get it running?
The problem is that the people who run these campaigns are political junkies with little experience in life other than playing politics. That’s all of them, from the campaign directors to those young twenty-somethings with their political science degrees who think that they will parlay their campaign work into an influential job in the winning candidate’s administration.
The sad part is that half of them do win and end up running the US government and we are stuck with it and them. Think Stephanie Cutter and David Axelrod and all those Deputy Assistant Secretaries at DHS and EPA who have never had a real job in their lives.
Sounds like ‘Beached Orca’ would have been apt as well.
This explains why some Romney adviser was already ‘leaking’ to the press yesterday that the loss was the fault of the messaging team. (Pointing blame away from their own failed GOTV effort.)
Add this together with the highly touted VP announcement app that failed as well and you’ve got to wonder if this was also tied to how the Romney consultants were enriching themselves instead of effectively using campaign resources. I mean, someone sold them on this and they gave, I’d bet, a juicy contract to someone. I bet some hired consultant got a cut for it.
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Excellent point! A lot of R volunteers have never even used an app.
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