I had a project ORCA guy in my polling place. I was a plain ole poll watcher. It was hard to figure how they were going to get names of voters when they checked in and of course he couldn’t. When the poll watching provision of FL statute says that we must be “allow close enough to reasonably do our jobs”, the architects of this program should have seen a problem with foundation...getting the names. SOE’s in dem counties put poll watchers in the corner. As long as dem and rep are treated alike, we have no grounds to complain.
I was as least able to use the ORCA volunteer to help me as a second set of eyes, but he had little training in what you are and are not allowed to do in the polling place. I would not be shocked to find out that the fair number of ORCA people were ejected in dem areas.
Personally, in 2006 I was part of one of these ORCA-type things, and in that case our problem was that we had lists, we got names, and we called them, but the people were dissallusioned by republicans enough that a good number of the people we called came out to vote Democrat. We turned out opposition, because we didn’t do a good job of making the lists clean.
Anyway, I think part of the real problem was that the Romney campaign targetted “unlikely” voters in their early voting campaign, assuming the likely voters would show up on election day.
That works if you can talk your low-propensity voters into voting early. But it seems easier to just target ALL your voters to vote early, so they don’t get dissallusioned at the last minute and decide not to vote.
Imagine how better it would have been for popular vote if the GOP had gotten most of their voters in New York and New Jersey out to vote early, before the storm hit.
I think if they are going to let people freely vote early, it is time for the GOP to try to get every one of their voters to go out and vote early. Especially if they have just determined that the voter will actually support the GOP.