How the Obama campaign won the race for voter data

Washington Post ^ | July 28, 2013 | Joel Kowsky

[Innovative]

From the moment Barack Obama took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, and every day thereafter, his team was always preparing for the 2012 campaign.

As the Republican candidates were gearing up and then battling one another through the summer and fall of 2011, the Obama team was investing enormous amounts of time, money and creative energy in what resembled a high-tech political start-up whose main purpose was to put more people on the streets, armed with more information about the voters they were contacting, than any campaign had ever attempted.

[Innovative]

Organization was the key.

Republicans should learn from it, while they were trying to win "the hearts and minds", the Obama campaign was identifying those they can get to the polls to vote for them.

IMO both are important. Obama had the machinery, the GOP better build one by the next elections and use it.

[Cowboy Bob]

And if they can’t get them to the polls, they’ll vote on their behalf...

[jonrick46]

The Zer0 campaign had access to NSA insider information IMHO. If Snowden could do it, so can a DemonRAT Snowden.

[cherry]

no, the problem is that we have arrogant candidates and their supporters who spend every once of their energy killing each other off.....with friends like some freepers and pubs, who the heck would ever want to be a candidate.....because nobody is going to pass the PURITY test for some....

[pepsionice]

State elections are determined by independents. So you get to a point where you know that a voting district has a shift percentage that you can exploit. You max your money out in those areas...rather than safe areas. You can look across various states, where the Obama team spent almost nothing, because they knew it was either a safe-win or a safe-loss.

I’d forecast a repeat of this in 2016. At least thirty states will have almost no Republican or Democratic national money spent at all. It’ll be painfully obvious that either candidate has given up on the thirty states, and they both will concentrate on the remaining twenty.

You can also sense the importance of using Latino votes in the remaining states. If you can register new voters....they typically vote Democrat.

[Olog-hai]

Yes, because it’s only about winning elections and not about the character of leaders. To hell with conservative principles and use any dirty trick merely to win.

[Olog-hai]

Organization or underhanded tricks?

[deks]

In the last hundred years about 40 to 50 percent of eligible voters have not voted for president. I wonder how many who do not vote now could be gotten to the polls to vote conservative?

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

Three letters:

N

S

A

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

"The Zer0 campaign had access to NSA insider information IMHO. If Snowden could do it, so can a DemonRAT Snowden."

Bingo! Remember that 'secret' think tank the 0bama campaign set up to data mine voter data? That was nothing more than the NSA working under cover of the 0bama campaign, and the reason it was held a close secret had nothing to do with Romney finding out about it. More likely, it was an active NSA hub. Fox news did a feature story on this so-called Obama campaign team.

Also, remember Romney's 'real time' voter data computer program called Orca? Who killed it? Hmmmmmmmm!!!!

[Jane Long]

creative energy in what resembled a high-tech political start-up

"Creative energy" resembling a "high-tech start up", hmmmm.

No doubt the Repubs have problems playing in the major league, but the Dims had a certain *edge* to their game....as in...NSA...dead voters, etc.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Orca failed because it was buggy software. And it was buggy because instead of spending money on it, they tried to do it on the cheap, with volunteers and campaign staffers writing code instead of paying professionals.

[null and void]

Three letters:

N

S

A

Neo

Stasi

Agency

?

[Berlin_Freeper]

What was it called.... Orca, or something. Romney’s plan that completely broke down (sabotage by Leftist tech people?) in the crucial early hours of election day.

[VerySadAmerican]

I don’t believe people knocking on doors to get people to vote for obama is what they were doing. They were working on fraud.

[dixiechick2000]

Yes...it was ORCA, and who knows why it broke down. From my reading, it was an untested software that was the biggest FAIL of this young century.

Then, there is Rove, et al. They believe that amnesty and funding Obamacare is a sure winner. They love Jeb Bush. Not attractive to the Reagan dems, at all. Millions who voted for McCrazy stayed home.

Wacko Bird, here...

[Wally_Kalbacken]

I was one of the Romney campaign volunteers who was trained for ORCA, though I never saw it, never got a demo of it, just saw PowerPoint slides and listened to conference calls from Boston talking about how great it was.

The Monday evening before the election we (as in 34,000 people who were supposed to be using the app) were asked to call in to a final conference call to get last minute details. Part of the instructions for the conference call were "call in 5-10 minutes early to be sure we are all conferenced in". I started calling at 8:15 pm for the 8:30 pm call, and got busy signals for 35 minutes while speed re-dialing it. Then at ~8:50 pm I connected, only to hear a recorded message say "The conference call is now concluded, thank you for participating!"

So I started calling the limited number of folks I knew in Boston, Washington and Tampa to figure out - when are we getting the download of this app, which we need to start using in about 7 f***ing hours at the polls? Every number I could dial had a blown up voice mailbox. Couldn't reach anyone.

Then I e-mail about 7 Romney people asking for the proper contact so I could actually get ORCA loaded on my phone. No responses. I google "ORCA/Romney" and find a Huffington Post article written by a reporter who had crashed one of the training conference calls on ORCA several weeks before the election. He published information in the article that the Romney Campaign hadn't even distributed to me (a PDF with download instructions - but useless because I needed a particular URL and specific password). So I'm starting to get concerned about midnight Monday when I see that I am learning more about my ostensible function on Tuesday from the Huffington Post than from the campaign I have contributed to and volunteered for.

Then in a Facebook post I dredged up, I saw comments indicating that the software would be downloaded at 5:00 am election morning. Great, I go to sleep for a few hours and check e-mail at 5:15 am. No e-mail. I call the "Command Center" number for ORCA and get a recorded message "Call us after 6:00 am". I call after 6 and continuously until 10 am, when I finally reach someone. In the meantime I get to the precinct I was assigned to at about 3 minutes before open. Easily 300 people already lined up. Inside are 3 GOP poll-watchers for each precinct registration table. Roughly 3x what was necessary. Nice to have a surplus of volunteers, but use them wisely, not ultra redundantly in a limited number of places. When I finally get through to the Romney Command Center I ask about my ORCA app I'm getting this hemming and hawing from what must have been a 25 year old in Boston. He just couldn't bring himself to admit the app crashed and burned and said "uh..er...it isn't necessary for you..uh... to remain at that polling place."  So I get in my car and started calling to find out where I was needed. Every hotline/command center number was melted down, you couldn't reach anyone.

A few minutes later I started getting this stream of calls from locations ostensibly all over the country (LA, Buffalo, Norfolk, NYC, Cincinnati, etc.) It was the beginning of a torrent of calls from the Romney HQ personnel in Boston and Washington who had to resort to using their personal cell phone to communicate with people in the field. So, for example I'd get a call saying go up to Riviera Beach to precinct XXXX and see so-and-so about thus-and-such. Then while driving to Riviera Beach I'd get a call saying "No, turn around and get down to this particular precinct in Boca", and then en route to that I'd get another new instruction to go in an entirely different direction. It was a bunch of folks in Boston on their personal phones making decisions which had no central control, logic, or, in the end, purpose.

Some of the lawyers who were working in the Romney Campaign with me on the ground in Palm Beach County are heavy hitters who bill at $475/hr. My opportunity cost is not that large, but still I volunteered several days (and contributed some cash, as did my wife.) And to take this crew of volunteers and use them in such a disorganized, pointless way was a crime. It was a f***king Chinese fire drill all afternoon.

Late in the afternoon I settled in at a polling location in Olympic Hts. - almost out of amusement at the irregularities and inconsistencies that were cropping up. Nothing like a conscious conspiracy to manipulate the vote, just incompetent poll workers who were emulating the skill and motivation of your average postal worker. Tons of spoiled ballots. All sorts of other unusual things. I stayed for the counts (small Obama margins of victory in that precinct, small enough that people who knew the area were encouraged that it was a good sign for Romney). I left and got home while there was still some sense it could go Romney's way, but his Florida numbers were weak from that point on.

I know it is a hard thing to do to run a campaign with loads of volunteers and all the temporary paid workers, but this was a joke. The vaunted Romney talent for organization and business leadership was nowhere on display in the conduct of the campaign operation I saw here in FL.

I have two theories on what happened:

1. Some young crew of tech folks in the Romney HQ was overly impressed with what they could do to create the "killer app" for the campaign. They were so impressed with their great idea, they forgot to beta test it, and like a lot of software, it didn't work in its initial form. It blew up right out of the gate. There was no contingency plan, and these young, tech-enamored folks cannot improvise in the old, lo-tech world (which is still what the majority of campaign logistics are.)

2. There is the possibility of sabotage of the app and the phone system by folks antagonistic to the Romney Campaign, maybe even by some plants in the campaign who were functionally Obama operatives. Perhaps Romney's nice guy Mormon perspective is less aware of the potential for back stabbing and dirty tricks like these and that left the door open. Dunno. Just sayin'.

Maybe the ORCA application wouldn't have made any difference even if it was functioning properly. I don't know how to assess that. But the margin in FL was only 70,000 votes.

Here we have the Washington Post telling us how great the Obama campaign was, and it seem they were pretty darn good at this aspect of things. I hope the Post gets as deep into the failures in the Romney campaign. But, as they say, success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan. I suspect that anyone who knows is not inclined to talk about it.

The GOP has to look at the RNC as the locus for a voter database that runs 24x7x365. It needs to be analogous to a consumer credit database, compiling information on voters in a central file, so that predictive models can be run against it for races from dog catcher to the presidential campaign. All GOP candidates could access the data, for a fee. Th GOP need s to look at this ans an information utility which it maintains and manages at the national level, but can be used anywhere in the country. If I am running for KY state Senate in a particular district, I can pay for access to information for my GOTV effort in my district. If I am running for Governor or US Senate, I can buy the data and run my own model overlays against it.

This voter data and technology aspect of things has to be fixed, and fast or we are going to see Hillary Clinton use Obama2012's system, enhanced and refined, no doubt, to win the 2016 election.

[Yosemitest]

VOTER FRAUD was their key!

Someone once commented:

"Stolen?
Then you should get right on this and prove it."

First watch 8 minutes 16 seconds of video titled Romney defeated Obama - if not for voter fraud.

Then ... read and think about this.

Someone wrote:

"I believe there was voting fraud,
but that it was not the reason Romney lost.
Even without fraud he would still have lost. "
I don't completely agree.
I believe there WAS ENOUGH Voter Fraud to throw the 80 Electoral College Votes from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida.
I also believe that had Romney SAVAGED Obama, like he SAVAGED the Conservatives that ran against him in the Primary, Romney would have gotten more votes in the General election.
So yes, it's Romney's fault, but there WAS ENOUGH VOTER FRAUD to steal the election for Obama.

URGENT: ELECTION FRAUD VOLUNTEERS NEEDED IN WI, OH, PA, VA, FL

Maker of Unskewed Polls Creates ‘Obama Voter Fraud’ Map — See Which States He Thinks Should’ve Been Romney’s

Why There Won’t Be a Presidential Recount

None Dare Call it Stolen Ohio, the election, and America’s servile press

www.unskewedpolls.com

Black States = States Obama won by Voter Fraud. Click the state for more information.

Voter Turnout figures for 2012 indicate possible voter suppression and fraud

Vote Scamming in Philadelphia

Vote Scamming in Cleveland

Was Virginia won by vote fraud?

Vote Scamming in Florida

Question: Should President Romney Pardon Treasonist Barack Hussein Obama II, a.k.a. Barry Soetoro ?


Romney might have won, but with Obama's Criminals running the "Justice Department", they'll never admit Romney won.

Black States = States Obama won by Voter Fraud. Click the state for more information.




Photo Credit: Barackofraudo.com

[EternalVigilance]

And yet, if the Republicans hadn’t nominated a candidate pretty much everyone, even their own base, basically hated, Obama still would have lost, in spite of all their “sophistication.”

[jonrick46]

I have emailed Newt about this idea. He didn’t respond, but I am sure it hit home. This is something like what I wrote:

Let’s say that all phone conversations are digitally stored until voice recognition software can put them into text. The storage of text takes little storage space and allows for huge amounts of text to be stored. They say that storage space is growing exponentially. With the phone tree architecture that Snowden described, you can organize the text according to rings of influence. You then have quite a powerful system.

Lets say you have a political campaign and want to ID those who would be your grass roots. With software, you can worm through a few years worth of text and find those friendly to your campaign. It would be as easy as doing a Google search. Then, because you have access to all the phone numbers, you could robocall your grassroots for support. Phones would get texts saying dial this number and donate. You see the power such an intelligence tool would have in the hands of an unethical person like Zer0 in power?

Let’s say you want to take out a political opponent by finding something embarrassing about them. That would be easy. You have the text of all their phone conversations. God help them if they dialed for a sex escort or asked where they could score some crack. You see the power such an intelligence tool would have to take out the opposition?

In the hands of the thugs we see working in the Zer0 Syndicate, the NSA could take out political enemies as easy as it did Paula Deen. And, there would be zero political accountability for doing it because the operation of the NSA is top secret. No one can crack into the workings of the NSA because it is inaccessible.