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Project ORCA fail - p/o Romney Election Day GOTV debacle


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I rarely read, and never post links to highly partisan bloggers, but I read a tweet about this today and checked the source. It's written by a technical volunteer, who knows how much fact vs. frustration, but it's fascinating how badly ORCA was implemented and executed in the final segment of the campaign.

 

 

What is Project Orca? Well, this is what they told us:

Project ORCA is a massive undertaking – the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election.

 

Pretty much everything in that sentence is false. The "massive undertaking" is true, however. It would take a lot of planning, training and coordination to be done successfully (oh, we'll get to that in a second). This wasn't really the GOP's effort, it was Team Romney's. And perhaps "unprecedented" would fit if we're discussing failure.

The entire purpose of this project was to digitize the decades-old practice of strike lists. The old way was to sit with your paper and mark off people that have voted and every hour or so, someone from the campaign would come get your list and take it back to local headquarters. Then, they'd begin contacting people that hadn't voted yet and encourage them to head to the polls. It's worked for years.

 

as a software guy, this is nothing short of incredible...

Edited by In-A-Gadda-Levitre
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Politico article on ORCA, pretty much backs up the other guy...

 

In some cases, another Republican said, volunteers were just told to record information about voter turnout on paper and keep it handy until ORCA returned to full functionality. It didn’t.

 

Another Republican working on the system in Boston told POLITICO, “They kept telling us the problems on North Carolina were just our state, but that’s apparently not true … We discovered as the day went on that no one was using [the website] because someone had sent out incorrect logins and passwords to every single person in the state.”

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Funny that a party which trumpets small government and individual freedom forced an inefficient and ineffective central system like this onto its campaigners. Anyone else find that ironic?

 

No, becuase one has nothing to do with the other.

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How does a program checking who voted on one day go against smaller government and personal freedom?

 

So you see no conflict in ideals for a party which is against big government and bureaucracy taking power away from local campaigners and making them run through this centralized system?

 

Funny, because the campaigners should did, and so do the political experts. Googling "Romney ORCA small government" returns a number of articles with complaints and criticisms from the pollsters themselves.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-project-orca-disaster-2012-11

The bitter irony of this entire endeavor was that a supposedly small government candidate gutted the local structure of GOTV efforts in favor of a centralized, faceless organization in a far off place (in this case, their Boston headquarters). Wrap your head around that.

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So you see no conflict in ideals for a party which is against big government and bureaucracy taking power away from local campaigners and making them run through this centralized system?

 

Funny, because the campaigners should did, and so do the political experts. Googling "Romney ORCA small government" returns a number of articles with complaints and criticisms from the pollsters themselves.

 

http://www.businessi...isaster-2012-11

Wait, a business wouldn't use a program like ORCA? Only the govnerment would? That's a stretch even for a stretch.

 

True irony is claiming the Repubs have a "war on women" and then trotting-out Bill Clinton to stump for Barry.

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Wait, a business wouldn't use a program like ORCA? Only the govnerment would? That's a stretch even for a stretch.

 

True irony is claiming the Repubs have a "war on women" and then trotting-out Bill Clinton to stump for Barry.

 

Where is there a business in this? Or are you referring to Romney's campaign as a business? Because if you are, it is exactly that type of thinking that helped cost him the election.

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Wow... I was reading about it (ORCA)... Some calling it the "Fail Whale."

 

LoL... Watching Obama bring the ground game wood compared to the "Fail Whale" Romney and the GOP is like watching the Bills wallow against the Pats*. It isn't even funny...

 

As much as I hate the Pats* and Kraft... Who would you put at the helm of the country... Surely, not the bozo Bills!

 

Where is there a business in this? Or are you referring to Romney's campaign as a business? Because if you are, it is exactly that type of thinking that helped cost him the election.

 

Yeah... And he was gonna run the country like a business... LoL..

Edited by ExiledInIllinois
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