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.
-------------------------------------------------
Excellent point! A lot of R volunteers have never even used an app.