The day a Narwhal killed an Orca

[Born_A_Truman]

More aftermath ...

Project Orca issued Romney poll watchers rosters of identified Romney supporters in their precinct. Next to each voter was a pin number and two boxes. One was checked when the voter voted. Every hour or so, you would go through the roster, check the second box, and make a list of the pin numbers of supporters who had voted in the last hour. This was sent by smart phone ap or by texting to Mitt Romney's national headquarters in Boston. Poll watchers were also given phone numbers to Orca help hotlines, as well as to legal and other support.

Once the numbers arrived in Boston, the theory was that a computer would decode them and remove the voters they represented from an electronic master-list at each local headquarters. There, phone banks would be in effect "running" voters who had not yet made it to the polls throughout the day on the basis of real-time information.

In theory, on Election Day we would be using using tactical nukes against Narwhal's ground troops. They would never know what hit them. In practice- as first tries of technologically complicated systems usually are- Orca was a disaster.

[sandnsea]

Why 1s and 2s? We get our 2s to the polls too, not just 1s. We don't lump them into a big pool of undecideds that we have to sort through. Also, if we start losing our 2s, we know we've got big problems.

The Obama campaign's GOTV was not just knocking on doors it wasn't in 2008 either. There's a massive phone database as well. Early voting also identifies people who have already voted, one big reason for the big push for early voting. You can then hit your stragglers on election day and get them to the polls.

AFAIK, there's also poll watching and identifying voters on election day, but maybe I'm mistaken about that.

In any event, their system sucks and we can beat them every time as long as it does.

[Born_A_Truman]

I did GOTV phone calls on election day and the OFA web site was awesome!!