Posted on 11/12/2012 2:19:14 PM PST by GlockThe Vote
Worse still, Ekdahl told Business Insider that the Romney campaign failed to provide poll-watching volunteers in his region — Jacksonville, Florida, a key Republican city in a major swing state — with proper credentials and accurate voter strike lists, rendering them unable to perform their duties even if the ORCA app had worked.
In interviews with Business Insider last week, sources close to the Romney campaign confirmed Ekdahl's account, and described a technological undertaking that failed at every level. According to several of these sources, ORCA was developed by a small, isolated tech team working under Romney's political team. These sources told Business Insider that the product was never properly beta-tested, and wasn't revealed to the rest of the campaign — including the digital team — until the week of the election.
Most people on the campaign "weren't that surprised" by ORCA's failure, said one Republican communications strategist close to the Romney campaign.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
It seems that we have to relearn how to do these things in every election cycle, and we're regressing. I worked for both of Bush's campaigns, and although the technology was nowhere near comparable to what we have now, I never had a runner come late to my polls, and I never missed getting a call.
We have FOUR registered Republicans in this house, and two of us contributed money to Romneys' campaign. Because we all like to vote together, we're usually the last to vote in our small sub-suburban polling place, and we head over to the fire hall around 7:30 PM. During McCain's run, there were only two of us. We got multiple calls on election day reminding us to vote. We did not receive a single call on Nov 6th reminding us to vote.
NOT ONE CALL. In a state Romney supposedly believed he could win: PA.
Perhaps you should file some appropriate papers in appropriate courtrooms and find out?
Me too... I knew it way back.. the election was “fixed”....
HE KNEW IT TOO... the debates were a cartoon.. Kabuki Theater..
Either that, or he delegated too much authority to out-of-touch campaign managers who fed him bogus internal polls.
Perhaps he believed in some sort of LDS Church "predestination" prophecy that he'd win, and overlooked the details of effective campaigning.
Most likely, he just overestimated the intelligence of some segments of the electorate. He and Ryan were too wonky, and could not bring themselves to dumb down the campaign to get enough ignorant voters in swing states.
I think he ran a good campaign in many ways....very impressed.
But, it’s clear this was a disaster. Hopefully the party will learn from the future.
Bush’s GOTV was great. Follow that model instead of the top-down approach Romney did.
That is the point, despite thousands of lawyers like myself willing to donate our time, hundreds of millions of dollars raised etc, ROMNEY HAD NO PLAN TO DEAL W ANYTHING AT ALL.
I’m really angry reading all of this TBH. I know what the demos do - but that does not excuse imcompetence and half steps and bs like Romney gave us internally.
Did Romney ever go on Rush? did Romney ever go on Savage?
Did Romney Ever extend a hand to the Paul or Palin supporters?
GUESS WHAT - 3 MILLION PLUS VOTES AT LEAST THERE ALONE IF HE WOULD HAVE DONE THAT.
The two GOP lawyers who came to my polling place - where I was poll watching - did not seem to know what to do if something had been going wrong. They did say that ORCA was not working for a lot of people.
I do think ORCA was hacked at some point during the day, because it shut down on me after working fine. But even if it had worked perfectly, all it was going to result in were texts, calls and visits to voters to remind them to vote. I didn’t see the Obama campaign do more.
Which brings me back to the belief that touting ORCA as the reason for the loss enables the reader to ignore vote fraud. I didn’t see the Obama campaign doing anything in my area of my swing state. But I did see a whole lot of “likely Obama voters” at the polls in my exurb. Many of them had not bathed recently, did not speak English hardly at all and in some cases did not know their own addresses. But they showed up, gave names of registered voters and voted. We only have one electronic machine and the only early voting is limited, so perhaps in my town the fraud had to be done the old-fashioned way.
I have to believe Romney had every intention of winning. You could see it in his final weeks. I do agree that many on his team probably were not committed to do what needed to be done. Parts of this campaign were managed beautifully. Others, not well at all.
I find it hard to believe that Romney lost on purpose. I think his whole life has been aimed at the Presidency—whether or not it has anything to do with the White Horse prophecy—but that he has simply surrounded himself by a bunch of hacks—party insiders who don’t know their ***s from a hole in the ground.
If you read Sarah Palin’s book about the McCain campaign, you get the picture. It has been suggested that maybe Romney sabotaged McCain by lending him handlers who purposely lost, so Romney would get his turn. But maybe not. It looks as if the same guys have done the same stupid things all over again.
No fire in their bellies, no principles, just do the same stupid things over and over again because they think that’s what they’re supposed to be doing.
One reason Romney lost is because of massive voter fraud. I’m not sure if the base stayed home, or if Obama’s guys merely stole millions of votes. We’ve seen millions of votes added by double voting and dead people. Now we’ve seen millions of votes stolen and lost. Something that has been done before on a lesser scale, but seldom like this.
If Romney had actually been WATCHING in those key places, either he would have blocked some of that massive fraud, or he would have demanded investigations and recounts. Instead, he meekly retired without a peep.
Exactly what I was thinking.
>> “That is the point, despite thousands of lawyers like myself willing to donate our time, hundreds of millions of dollars raised etc, ROMNEY HAD NO PLAN TO DEAL W ANYTHING AT ALL.” <<
.
The fool apparently believed the false prophet’s utterances. Faith? - I don’t know what...
This is really discouraging. Instead of going the capitalist route and choosing the most competent company to build and run ORCA, they passed it off to a bunch of political operatives within the campaign.
There are plenty of technical companies who could have handled this contract VERY well, many many who are conservative. I actually expected this kind of stupidness when I heard about Romney refusing to use a doc sharing iPad app because it cost $10(!) choosing instead to use free email to edit documents, which is hugely inefficient.
This is ridiculous. Ridiculous. Apart from the whole RINO capitulation, which is monstrous, this short sighted approach to expertise will doom the GOP to Whig status.
Then why do GOP candidates repeatedly and knowingly hire incompetent staff? EVERY ELECTION?
Seems funny that in light of the same post election stories of GOP incompetent campaign management, they go to the same failed people.
That is not intent to win.
The difference between W 2004 efforts and Romney 2012 are night and day different.
In 2004, I flew down to Florida for a week and the W team paid for everything and we had an army, cars, command centers, contacts, it worked incredibly.
This year was a cmoplete disaster internally.
BTW - Romneys’ team never even BETA tested BEACHED WHALE even once before election day!
BS... Everybody saw (or heard about) the first debate. If people don't know who they are voting for by the end of October then they are f***ing idiots who probably shouldn't be voting anyway. The campaign was fine. The election day collapse is BS.
The problem was massive vote fraud that still needs to be investigated. Subpoena the check in sheets and compare them to the numbers!
>> “I find it hard to believe that Romney lost on purpose.” <<
.
No, he was convinced that he’d win. The data all pointed to it, and the collective voting tabulations for the house races in the battleground states says that he did win, and big.
Its time to quit this hummming and hawing, and recognize that the American people have been had big time.
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