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It’s pardonable to be defeated, but never surprised. — Frederick the Great Over the past week, there has been plenty of harsh criticism of the Romney campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts and volunteer system. While the campaign has pushed back on these claims, my experience inside a swing-state legal war room last Tuesday leads me to say that the criticisms of the campaign’s GOTV in general, and of its use of the Orca system in particular, ring true. The main GOTV effort was supposed to operate like this: Poll watchers listen to the names of everyone coming in to vote and notate...

(More Project Orca fallout, and Romeny being blindsided) If you spend your time watching politics and haven’t been hiding in a deep depression since Tuesday, you’ve probably been hearing a lot about “ORCA.” According to the Washington Post, ORCA “was designed as a first-of-its-kind tool to employ smartphones to mobilize voters, allowing them to microtarget which of their supporters had gone to the polls.” There is now widespread condemnation of the program as being sloppy and poorly deployed. ....... Specifically Targeted Victory, FLS Connect, and The Stevens and Schriefer Group. While the Romney campaign did work with other consultants, they...

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. ......

Romney’s Get Out the Vote Fiasco Bethany Mandel 11.09.2012 The Wednesday before the election, Mitt Romney sent a special message to volunteers about a special project his campaign was working on: “With state of the art technology and an extremely dedicated group of volunteers, our campaign will have an unprecedented advantage on election day.” What is it they say about something that sounds too good to be true? It probably is. That was the case with the Romney campaign’s “Project ORCA.” The idea behind Project ORCA was simple, albeit far too complex in execution. Romney’s Boston headquarters wanted a way...

Well, this is incredibly disturbing. And while I don't think you can place the blame for Romney's defeat on this massive screw up in their GOTV efforts, considering the margin of defeat in OH, FL, VA, and CO, it certainly didn't help. John at Ace of Spades was one of 30,000 volunteers who were to take part in a brand new, high tech program that digitized "strike lists." Basically, the volunteer would be at a polling station and strike off the names of voters as they voted. Then, about half way through the day, they were supposed to send those...