The Monday evening before the election we (as in 34,000 people who were supposed to be using the app) were asked to call in to a final conference call to get last minute details. Part of the instructions for the conference call were "call in 5-10 minutes early to be sure we are all conferenced in". I started calling at 8:15 pm for the 8:30 pm call, and got busy signals for 35 minutes while speed re-dialing it. Then at ~8:50 pm I connected, only to hear a recorded message say "The conference call is now concluded, 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 f***ing hours at the polls? Every number I could dial had a blown up voice mailbox. Couldn't reach anyone.
Then 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 before the election. 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 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 Romney Command Center 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 number was melted down, you couldn't reach anyone.
A few minutes later I started getting this stream of calls from locations ostensibly 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 phone 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 some cash, as did my wife.) And to take this crew of volunteers and use them in such a disorganized, pointless way was a crime. It was a f***king Chinese fire drill all afternoon.
Late in the afternoon I settled in at a polling location in Olympic Hts. - almost out of amusement at the irregularities and inconsistencies that were cropping up. Nothing like a conscious conspiracy to manipulate the vote, just incompetent poll workers who were emulating the skill and motivation of your average postal worker. Tons of spoiled ballots. All sorts of other unusual things. I stayed for the counts (small Obama margins of victory in that precinct, small enough that people who knew the area were encouraged that it was a good sign for Romney). I left and got home while there was still some sense it could go Romney's way, but his Florida numbers were weak from that point on.
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 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. It blew up right out of the gate. 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. Dunno. Just sayin'.
Maybe the ORCA application wouldn't have made any difference even if it was functioning properly. I don't know how to assess that. But the margin in FL was only 70,000 votes.
Here we have the Washington Post telling us how great the Obama campaign was, and it seem they were pretty darn good at this aspect of things. I hope the Post gets as deep into the failures in the Romney campaign. But, as they say, success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan. I suspect that anyone who knows is not inclined to talk about it.
The GOP has to look at the RNC as the locus for a voter database that runs 24x7x365. It needs to be analogous to a consumer credit database, compiling information on voters in a central file, so that predictive models can be run against it for races from dog catcher to the presidential campaign. All GOP candidates could access the data, for a fee. Th GOP need s to look at this ans an information utility which it maintains and manages at the national level, but can be used anywhere in the country. If I am running for KY state Senate in a particular district, I can pay for access to information for my GOTV effort in my district. If I am running for Governor or US Senate, I can buy the data and run my own model overlays against it.
This voter data and technology aspect of things has to be fixed, and fast or we are going to see Hillary Clinton use Obama2012's system, enhanced and refined, no doubt, to win the 2016 election.
I have read articles about how ORCA was done. As a systems professional, I can say it was done in about as stupidly as possible.
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Great post, thanks.
I am currently trying to get access to a state Republican party voter database to support a local election. I am extremely unimpressed, and completely concur with your conclusion.
The RNC has such a database, it's called Voter Vault. I've used it as a volunteer for a GOP Congressional campaign.
But they have to go much further. They are still mired in the phone/direct mail mindset. They have to work on modernizing the channels they use and the methods to communicate and how they integrate data outside of voting lists.
Thanks for providing all this info and insight.
My bet is on your #2 — sabotage.