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Project Orca: How an IT Disaster Destroyed Republicans' Get-Out-The-Vote Effort
cheesecake23 writes "Many talking heads have attributed Obama's success to an unmatched 'ground game.' Now, inside reports from campaign volunteers suggest that Project Orca, a Republican, tech-based voter monitoring effort with 37,000 volunteers in swing states, turned out to be an epic failure due to dismal IT. Problems ranged from state-wide incorrect PINs, to misleading and delayed information packets delivered to volunteers, to a server outage and missing redirection of secure URLs."
I guess this is what happens when your backward, anti-freedom police state party systematically alienates all the programmers and sysadmins and hackers, all the good techs and IT personnel who otherwise might have wanted to help you.
Good riddance.
Looks like all his competent IT people self-deported to the other campaign?
Perhaps more people just wanted to vote for Obama.
I'd hate to think it all comes down to how good your IT team is (even though I'm on one).
Then again, perhaps it is some comfort to the Republican's -- "All we have to do is better IT next time" -- and not bother to change the message.
Letter To Iran
The Obama campaign probably had that many people in Ohio just getting the coffee.
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
After all in the case of legitimate server outage the internet has a way to repair itself
In fact the escalation of calls from celebrity callers including gov Ridge urging me to vote Romney continued until minutes before the polls closed at 8pm and I had voted for Gary Johnson hours earlier.
Romney's loss was a Romney failure, not an IT failure.
I forgot to add this great tweet by the author of the final story linked in TFS when I submitted this to Slashdot:
Long story short: Don't beta-test an election.
The author of the linked story at Business Insider sounds quasi-tech and was a volunteer for the phone calls. He received an email late Monday night with a 60 page PDF of instructions and lists of names to call, and complained that he had to print it at home. Who prints PDF's when they can just view the document on their PC and make the calls, especially on a home inkjet printer?
It sounds like not only was the development of this tool a disaster but so was implementation at the user end point. If this tech-savvy guy tried to print at home with limited success just imagine what the "regular" Romney supporters were doing (or not doing) when they got the 60 page PDF.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Four times in four days, I had Democratic canvassers knock at my door and pester me about whether I voted yet. I told them yes, I voted absentee, so my choices have already been made, thanks for stopping by, have a great day, good luck, etc.
Two of the four tried to unload pamphlet after pamphlet on me after I clearly said "Already voted, thanks for asking, our ballots are cast." By the fourth day, I was quite irked.
How about we ditch the annoying door-to-door crap and stick to good old fashioned email spam? You can buy a precompiled list of my political viewpoints, financial status, and email addresses from ${SOCIAL_NETWORK} for pennies on the dollar. That way I can just filter and delete what I don't want to read instead of having to stand at my door trying to talk over some rambling campaign volunteer and push their papers right back at them.
The margins are alot higher than the Republicans want to admit...this was a first class ass whooping.
Hmmm. That gives me an idea. Perhaps the next "Watergate" will involve cyber warfare.
Proverbs 21:19
Man, your server room has a high ceiling.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I don't know, I think Republicans, reknowned for their respect for nerds, are capable of producing useful, eye catching, state of the art, web sites when they try: http://unskewedpolls.com/
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Maybe the people chosen to implement the IT for Project Orca really didn't want Romney to be president? It takes a village.
I've had painful experience of this on more than one job. Something to consider the next time someone runs with the pitch "I have a lot of money, so I know how to run the country". Some people are rich through connections, looting, or luck.
The conservative Republicans - they've done it. Dozens of knee-slapping gaffes. Ideas that *laugh* in the face of tedious concepts like reality. Well done, fellows. Well done.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
On the one hand, we have this story claiming that a failed get-out-the-vote effort was a significant factor in Romney's defeat. On the other, we have yesterday's story about how Nate Silver's statistical analysis of pre-election polls accurately predicted the outcome in all fifty states. If the first is true, then Silver's predictions were only accidentally correct, beating astronomical odds; or else Nate has somehow factored Republican IT failures into his statistical models. Neither seems plausible, so I don't believe the Orca troubles were actually very important.
Did you see what that asshole said about Nate Silver?
He could not refute his numbers so he attacked him personally. Basically picked on him like the high school bully he used to be.
This is what is wrong with the GOP. At this rate we at least won't have to worry about them much longer. The old white bigot demographic is dying out.
Must have pissed you off when Romney lost.
Go read that Obama quote again, because he said nothing like what you said. Leaving out words and attacking strawmen is not getting Republicans elected. You might want to make a note of that.
Mitt's problem is that he actually believed his own BS. As a "business executive" he should indeed have been able to run a brilliant campaign. The problem is, Mitt's "executive experience" was at Bain Capital.
Bain Capital is not a _real_ company. It doesn't build products or provide services. It is just a massive pump-and-dump and flipping operation. Therefore it makes sense that this isn't the place where somebody would actually hone executive skills. Romney's "business experience", just like his business itself, is a well crafted illusion. Bain Capital is a Potemkin village. Outward appearances suggest it's a real business but all it is is a place where people like Romney can take advantage of legal, fiscal, and moral loopholes to pump money out of legitimate wealth-creating companies.
After years of working there Mitt had himself convinced that he was a real executive. He wasn't. When faced with the real and challenging task of taking the presidency, there were no shortcuts to be taken, no loopholes to take advantage of. It was a true test of his business skills. And he failed MISERABLY.
Ah so this is the latest fairy dust justification they've found as to why Republicans lost. Blame it on IT.
Just more fucking nonsense.
Modern conservatives really, REALLY can't handle having their entire worldview be shattered by reality, especially the reality that Obama was not an Evil Commie Kenyan and was not ruining "their" country like they pretended. Cognitive dissonance fueled by self delusion, but the tank is on empty now. Liars and charlatans are trying to cover their deception by blaming anything and everything to see what sticks, what allows the 'smart' guys in the party stick around with minimal guilt of hypocrisy.
Cheers.
Do they even have "the Internets" in trailer parks, yet? I would think it wouldnn't ve economical to lay down the tubes there.
You might be surprised to learn that your average trailer park superintendent may have more experience running a WiFi mesh network than you do.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...is Robo-calling. In the 3 week before election I was getting more than a dozen republican robo-calls per day (I'm in Virginia, a so-called battle ground state with a tight race). Nothing says "You aren't worth my time, peasant" like a robo-call. By contrast I didn't get a single robo-call from democrats.
n/t
The Republicans are blaming everyone else but themselves. They've gone as far as to blame blacks for voting for the party that doesn't have candidates that publish books claiming that slavery was a "blessing in disguise."
Romney lost because:
1. He's slimy. He was an Etch-A-Sketch candidate.
2. Rather than court the independents that could have won the election for him, he courted the fringe. He picked that lunatic Ryan for VP.
3. He thought he was using the neocons. Wrong. The neocons used him. They were going to glom on to anyone who won the primaries and anyone paying attention saw this.
4. Because of #1, nobody could trust him, not even his fellow Republicans and certainly not Roger Ailes. Remember how Fox tried to hilight everyone except him before the primaries were done and then had to reluctantly back him after?
5. Not even the Mormons trusted him.
6. He even lost his hometown of Belmont MA, which is full of rich WASPs just like him.
People who know him didn't trust him. It showed.
Combine that with the utter vile rhetoric coming from GOP the last 4 years, is it any surprise that everyone with two brain cells to rub together disliked him far more than they did Obama?
Out of all the candidates that were backed by Roger Ailes' SuperPac, none won. Just look at the clown show that the primaries were, and the GOP picked a clown as a result.
Introspection is required. Until then, it's going to be a long cold winter of discontent for the GOP.
--
BMO
I thought these Republican idiots were supposed to be great businessmen and job creators. So how is it the Kenyan socialist communist fascist Marxist Muslim empty chair community organizer ran a campaign that outfoxed and outplayed them at every turn, even without having an entire media empire (Rupert Murdoch) spewing favorable propaganda 24/7 for free?
Because the Republicans jumbled crazy-ass social conservatism into their mix - Social conservatism which doesn't align with America any more. Ramblings about rape, transvaginal ultrasound, evolution, attacks on science. I'm not going to pick a loony to run my organization, even if he is good at balancing the checkbook.
.
Don't have to. Romney promised that he was going to get rid of FEMA once he got elected. That phrase certainly haunted him this last week prior to election day as Sandy's aftermath led almost all reporters to keep asking Romney about his FEMA comments. (!)
:>)
I think Ron Paul's social policies would completely drive away the young, tech-savvy crowd. He's part of the anti-gay, anti-immigrant, pro-life, global-warming-is-good, Christian, right-wing propaganda machine known as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons
From elsewhere:
mrshowrules [TotalFark] 2012-10-30 12:44:56 PM
List of People Conspiring Against the GOP, and therefore, America
(LOPCATGOPATA for short):
Liberals, Democrats, Socialists, Community Organizers, Geologists, Biologists, Meteorologists, Climatologists, Atheists, Muslims, Jews, Satan, ABC, NBC, CNN, CBS, PBS, All of cable news except FNC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, The Guardian, Black People, Mexicans, Human Rights Activists, SCOTUS, Europe, Movie Industry, Television Industry, Environmentalists, ACLU, The United Nations, Labor Unions, Colleges, Teachers (including kindergarten teachers), Professors, ACORN, National Endowment for the Arts, Gays, Judges, NPR, Paleontologists, Astrophysicists, Museums (*except Creationism Museum), WHO, WTO, Inflated tires, The Honolulu Advertiser, The Star Bulletin, Teletubbies, Sponge Bob and Patrick, Nobel Prize Committee, US Census Bureau, NOAA, Sesame Street, Comic Books, Little Green Footballs, Video Games, The Bible, CBO, Bruce Springsteen, Pennies, The Theory of Relativity, Comedy Central, Young People, whatever the hell a Justin Beiber is, Small Business Owners, Math, CPAC, Navy SEALs, The Economist, The Muppets, Iowa Republicans, Low-Flow Toilets, Breast Cancer Screenings, Chrysler, Clint Eastwood., Robert Deniro, Tom Hanks, Glenn Frey, Norman Rockwell, James Cameron, Dr. Seus, Nuns, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, Jonathan Krohn at age 17, Fact Checkers, Australia, Mitt Romney, Rasmussen, Fox News, Lockheed Martin, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Paul Ryan, Debate moderators, Ben Stein, Soup kitchens, Chris Christie
And now we can add "The IT Department" to the list.
--
BMO
Bain actually used both tactics. Sometimes they would try to inflate the value of the company. Other times they would saddle a company with debt, charge it exorbitant "consulting fees", and let it go into bankruptcy once there was nothing left to loot (dumping the pensions obligations onto taxpayers in the process; I guess the federal government is good for something after all)
In the end, it's still mostly a financial scheme that is more likely to result in wealth destruction than in wealth creation. And whatever the outcome, very little tangible work gets done.
For as much as slashdotters like to harp on about "evil Micro$oft", it's still a company that creates real products. Those products help people be more productive, more creative. For all its flaws, millions of people were introduced to computing through Windows. You can easily find men and women who will testify about the good things they were able to do with MS products ("I wrote a novel using Word" or "I keep in touch with my grandma thousands of miles away through MSN Messenger" or whatever)
I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to find somebody other than the company's owners themselves willing to testify about the great influence Bain Capital had on their lives. Quite the opposite judging by the most recent crop of political ads..
... IT gets blamed for everything.
And they antagonize me. Mind you, I am fundamentalist humanist. And a socialist.
Quit generalizing, not all old farts are the same, we just smell the same.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.