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.
...
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.
...
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 ...
Any Freepers have first hand experience with the app?
Holy Crap!! EPIC FAIL!!!!! So sad!!!!
GOP elites vs. tea party
Bitter internal fighting cost too much money, time and the election.
Having experienced computer sabotage every time I have something critical I’m working on - and seeing the same thing with multiple others who have also worked on critical eligibility issues - I question where the problems came from. I know nothing about this particular situation but I can smell the same crap that I’ve experienced, from a mile away. If it acted like it had been hacked, a logical question is whether it HAD been hacked.
When thugs run the NSA, DHS, DOD, and all the czar-ships that control every aspect of life, nothing is impossible to them. Nothing. The sooner everybody realizes that, the better.
I could definitely see a conspiracy theory here, where liberals get hired to work on the program, and intentionally bug it up.
I’ll never forget in 2008, when the teleprompter at the Republican convention “failed” just as Sarah was starting to give her speech.
Winds up that the Republicans had hired a FLAMING LIBERAL to operate the device. Republican leaders seem to think that none of the “little people” have political thoughts and could sabotage their efforts. They just cannot comprehend that. Remember one of Bush’s top guys for debate prep, likewise, we working both sides...and Kerry’s (I think) people knew EVERYTHING that Bush had done to prepare.
When the Republicans hire people, their first question should be to ask them what party they support. The second question should be for them to PROVE it. Then hit them up with a few questions that only Republicans could understand, such as “What is an amortization schedule”?
There are ways to screen, but you MUST do that, when you give people that much power over your effort - you just don’t hand the keys to some bearded dope smoker with a Grateful Dead shirt and expect him to be on your side.
(by the way, Sarah did just fine without the teleprompter)
Smells like sabotage. Or the GOP-e types in the campaign telling Tea Party volunteers “take a hike, we know better”.
Here is a case where there needs to be some serious finger pointing. This election was no different than any other, you must identify your voters and get them out to vote. This is Politics 101, every successful campaign must have a GOTV program. This time ORCA was all hype and chance rather than proven and tested, so it was either incompetence or sabotage and ORCA was a major contributing factor in the failure of this election!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2957089/posts
The program is all good and fine.
Did the Republicans have a back-up that used cell phones, with pencils and paper? Did it EVER occur to them that their was NO SECOND CHANCE if the program crashed, for ANY REASON.
Of course not- when has a computer program ever crashed? - THEY ARE IDIOTS!!!
Technology has made that process much more efficient—for the Rats. The Republicans are decades behind the times.
I have ALOT of experience in the area of designing highly available and scalable IT systems across a variety of platforms (20+ years) across a variety of industries including banking, advertising, finance, legal and automotive industries.
When a system underperforms to the point of becoming UN-USABLE, there are a number of questions to ask, including:
1. Was it designed to perform at a defined, acceptable level under anticipated peak loads? If you know you're going to have a maximum of 40,000 people using a system at peak load, you design the system to be scalable so that if 40,000 or more users are using it, it has available capacity. That means either that capacity is online all the time, or can be brought to bear quickly during peak utilization periods, thus the next question.
2. Have all single points of failure been eliminated, and can additional capacity to bear quickly if needed to maintain performance? (And then, how will that capacity be brought online quickly?)
If questions 1 and 2 (and their related questions) above were not properly addressed, it can certainly appear that a system has been compromised because it largely has - by its own flawed design. It's really only after eliminating these two questions that one can reasonably ask "has the system been compromised/hacked?"
I wasn't a user of the system, my best guess with the information available is that it simply became un-usable due to peak demand and the Romney Campaign's IT Staff didn't have a plan to bring additional capacity online quickly enough to maintain a proper service level for the users of the system.
Technology has made that process much more efficient—for the Rats. The Republicans are decades behind the times.
BINGO!
As reporters sometimes say, "the story is too good to check."
Thanks, very informative thread!
Agreed. People hired by the GOP to oversee critical technology must be reliably conservative. It’s too important to allow some long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking FM type to infiltrate the system.
My thought as well. Told not to bring their credentials???
Also, the whole plan sounds wrong. I don’t think people are supposed to have access to the names of people who have not voted yet.
As another poster pointed out, perhaps the system did not have adequate capacity for peak usage. That could have been intentional.
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