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."

Comments

Serves them right

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Serves them right

[Dr_Barnowl]

It's like the argument put forward by Neal Stephenson in Cryptonomicon - the Allies won WWII because they had the best technology, and the reason they had the best technology was because they were't the biggest assholes.

http://markpasc.org/blog/gems/athena.html

Re:Serves them right

[poity]

This sort of counter-bigotry and counter-hatred is as trashy and needlessly spiteful as any the GOP side can muster. Post-election is a time for healing and a time to work towards unity. Slashdot hates the polarized atmosphere of US politics, yet here we are deepening that divide even in a time of victory. Democrats, as the victors, need to be magnanimous, not petty like this.

Re:Serves them right

[tylikcat]

1) One can certainly be anti-GOP without being pro-Democrat. I found Obama moderately more tolerable than Romney - which is really saying something considering how I feel about Obama. (Surveillance society? Authorizing assasination? Not even to get in to things like how TSA is basically being used for extra-judicial harrassment, which is certainly a bigger problem than just the Obama administration considering how the courts are punting on regulating TSA.)

2) Adopting policies that are pro-science and pro-math might do a lot to win over the /. crowd. Pro-sex might help as well ;-)

Re:Serves them right

[Bob-taro]

It reminds me of an interesting passage from "That Hideous Strength". I loved it, but it's by C.S.Lewis and is not-at-all-subtly Christian, which I'm sure would offend a lot of slashdot readers.

“But I don’t see how one’s going to start a newspaper stunt without being political. Is it Left or Right papers that are going to print all this rot?”

“Both, honey, both,” said Miss Hardcastle. “Don’t you understand anything? Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and terrified of the other? That’s how things get done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it’s properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us–to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we’re non-political. The real power always is.”

“I don’t believe you can do that,” said Mark. “Not with the papers that are read by educated people.”

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader that can be gulled. All our difficulty comes from the others. When did you meet a workman who believes in the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair Flats. He is our problem. We need to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They are all right already. They’ll believe anything.”

I often think about especially that last bit when reading slashdot. Of course, later on in the story it says "Miss Hardcastle apparently overestimated the resistance of the working class to propaganda." (or something to that effect).

Re:Serves them right

[h4rr4r]

Is that what you are reduced to telling yourself?

You are almost at derp level potato. Get over it, he lost fair and square. Hate, racism and tax cuts for the rich are not American values anymore.

Re:Serves them right

[h4rr4r]

Laughing at the rage of bigots and hate mongers is good for the country. That is healing the wounds they created. We cannot work towards unity with those who do not want it. They hate us, they curse us to their imagined hell and pray that their gods strike us down.

I am no democrat, did not vote for Obama, but I sure am glad to see this country moving away from hate.

Re:Serves them right

[NatasRevol]

Just yours.
Top ten states by % of college graduates - all democrats
Bottom ten states by % of college graduates - 9 were republican

https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/266758023177981952/photo/1

Re:Serves them right

[Onuma]

I'm in a similar position, though I don't ever call myself a Republican, Democrat or any other affiliated party -- I just go with fiscal conservatism, military strength and a stern foreign policy.

I foresaw the lack of good GOP candidates over a year and a half ago. Called it just like it went down; Romney got the (R) nod and lost in the end to the incumbent. Nothing really surprising at all. I believe Romney had the economic know-how to help get the economy back on track, and the desire to see an America not weakened by diluted foreign policy and appeasement of others. I don't believe it's too much to ask to have a government who doesn't stifle business and doesn't let other nations step all over us.

The bottom line is that the GOP shot themselves in their collective feet. Obama ran a decent campaign, but Romney and the Republican Party showed just how behind-the-times they really are.

Re:Serves them right

[NatasRevol]

Ideologically, Republicans are for lower taxes, thus, less control of government over an individuals money.

Not any Republicans in my life time. And I remember Reagan getting elected. And tripling the national debt with military spending.

I think you're thinking of fiscally conservative Republicans. But those don't exist any more. Literally, they've all died off it was so long ago.

Re:Serves them right

[couchslug]

3) Not persecuting cannabis users even more than the GOP would be nice too.

Re:Serves them right

[couchslug]

Bullshit. The Republican base are still as dedicated to vengeance and pursuit of theocracy as ever, and still control the House so they can and will still stonewall progress.

The polarization of US is no accident. One cannot sit idly by waiting for ENEMIES to have a group hug. The US is too large to be one country, and as nature takes its course regionalism and the desire for self-determination rear their heads again. (The US has helped break up far smaller countries under UN auspices, but enforces Federal unity at gunpoint.)

Re:Serves them right

[Daetrin]

As someone said on twitter:

"The Rape guy lost" "Which one?" Your party has serious issues if people have to ask "Which one?"

Re:Serves them right

[strength_of_10_men]

Interesting.

However, the NYTimes exit polling gives a more nuanced version of this. For those with college degrees, a majority voted for Romney. For those with Post Grad degrees, Obama was the overwhelming choice.

Source (scroll down to "Education"

Re:Serves them right

[Medievalist]

And yet the Democrats also keep on spewing the hate against anybody who dares to disagree with them or challenge their plans. Imagine that.

When, exactly, did the self-proclaimed liberal Democrat gunman come into your church and try to murder your children? Because that's the bar for hate your team has set. Your people - particularly Ann Coulter - called for violence and hate and Jim David Adkisson answered that call.

I have to say I'm in awe of the of the Knoxville Unitarian Universalists, though. If that had happened in my church I would not have let that man leave the building alive... maybe that's because I'm a registered Republican? The Knoxville UUs held the man for police, and although several of them sacrificed their lives to protect their fellow Americans, nobody there took revenge.

Demographics and the Republican Party

[AMCandel]

Looks like all his competent IT people self-deported to the other campaign?

Or...

[DumbSwede]

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.

Re:Or...

[Trepidity]

Ugh, Slashdot ate part of my comment due to a <.

Reposting:

Yeah, in this particular election I think all these stories about GOTV efforts and ground games are unlikely to be pointing to real deciding factors. In a 2004-style election where the winner comes down to <1%, maybe. And this year, it's plausible some better turnout operations could've flipped Florida, which Romney only lost by 0.6%. But to win overall, he'd need to flip all of: Florida (0.6%), Ohio (1.9%), Virginia (3.0%), and Colorado (4.7%). The first is plausible, and the second is on the edge of possibility, but once you're talking about 5% shifts, that starts to get out of the range of what you can get from just better phone-banking.

Must have been God's will.

[Anonymous Coward]

After all in the case of legitimate server outage the internet has a way to repair itself

Re:Must have been God's will.

[John3]

Actually in situations like this the internet has a way to shut that whole thing down.

Quote

[cheesecake23]

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.

Re:Quote

[hamburger lady]

now, imagine these guys running FEMA.

yikes.

Incompatible narratives

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Republiclowns

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Who prints a 60 page PDF?

[HungWeiLo]

The average elderly Romney voter would go to the nearest public library, ask for help from the library staff, print out the PDF for free, then vote against their local library levy.