Last week, I discussed the disaster that was the Romney campaign’s Project ORCA. On Election Day over 37,000 volunteers spent the day struggling with a flawed and crashing GOTV (get out the vote) computer program, instead of actually getting out the vote. Those volunteers were supposed to be reporting on voter turnout in swing states, and in many instances spent the day troubleshooting with overwhelmed Romney campaign staffers in Boston over a computer program that had never been stress tested.
Since the election, some details have emerged from frustrated staffers involved with the campaign alleging that the difficulties the Romney campaign encountered with ORCA, as well as other digital problems, were the responsibility of consultants hired by the campaign who were more interested in their own bottom line than winning. Indeed, Romney’s digital director Zac Moffat told the Daily Caller that “he would not elaborate on the record about who made Project ORCA, but said it was not developed by Targeted Victory [Moffat's co-founded firm] or the campaign itself.”
We’ve heard very little about what went wrong on the record from top-level campaign staff. Today Romney’s political director Rich Beeson gave a very perplexing interview to National Review’s Katrina Trinko. He told Trinko,
“We hit the numbers we needed to hit. Our ground game turned out the people it needed to turnout. They just turned out more. They turned out 18 to 29 [year olds] at a higher level. They turned out African-Americans at a higher level. They turned out Hispanics at a higher level.”
“We hit the numbers we needed to hit”? Really? The numbers the Romney campaign needed to hit were, as NRO’s Ramesh Ponnuru tweeted, the numbers needed to win. Republicans saw 1.4 million fewer votes in 2012 verses 2008. Granted, turnout for Obama was off by a far greater amount–7.7 million voters– yet if Romney had brought out the same number of voters as McCain did in 2008 we would be talking about a Romney victory, not a Romney defeat. Romney even drew fewer Mormon voters than George W. Bush did in 2004 (numbers for the 2008 race are unavailable). Romney staffers could point to several positive stories from their campaign, but turnout isn’t one of them.
Beeson went on to defend not only ORCA in principle, but also in practice on Election Day:
Beeson contends that while Orca had its flaws on Election Day, it was a smart idea. “Did the overall system work the way that we wanted it to? No. But it is a good precursor for what I think we’ll want to be able to design and implement and improve on in coming elections? Absolutely,” he says.
With an election as close as Tuesday’s (NRO’s Jim Geraghty put the margin of victory at 407,000 votes between Romney and Obama in key swing states) what would have been a better use of resources? Should volunteers have been tracking voter turnout in order to get results to Boston a few hours before the networks would have, or should they have instead focused on traditional GOTV efforts like door knocks, transportation to polling locations, and calling undecided voters?
Worryingly, it appears the Romney campaign and the consultants it hired refuse to admit that ORCA was a bad strategy in theory and in practice, and that they also hope to replicate it for future campaigns. Given the huge financial investment the campaign gave to the consultants responsible for the program, it’s understandable that its utter failure is an inconvenient detail for those who would like to try to sell the program all over again. For the GOP’s sake in 2014 and 2016 and beyond, one would hope that the track record not only of ORCA, but also of the consultants and firms responsible, don’t disappear down the memory hole. For that to happen, the creators of ORCA need to be exposed by the Romney campaign’s staff as a last service to future GOP candidates.
Finally we have a denial from Targeted Victory, but we really need to find out the developers of ORCA and what Zac Moffat knew or didn't know about them. n nTargeted Victory still was in charge of Romney's other sites and social media campaigns. They were responsible for the failed ap that got outstripped by the mainstream media on the news of who the VP pick was. n n
Technology is a complement to a campaign. It does not win elections. If we conservatives believe that all we need is a better computer program, we'll definitely remain the minority.
Targeted Victory? You’re gonna need another company name.
What are the estimated voter losses? Were they far less than a million? Was this ultimately a rather minor thing that could not have saved Romney's campaign?
This just the sort of thing that Romney would most likely not have allowed to happen if he were in charge of the GOTV effort instead of spending 25 hours per day campaigning.
Whoever is pushing this “story” does not know ANYTHING about GOTV and how these efforts are organized. I won’t go in to detail, but lets start with the basic fact …. the Romney campaign is not responsible for GOTV, the State and County parties organize the efforts, plain and simple. Always have.
I have worked large State wide and County wide GOTV efforts, and can tell you first hand they are fraught with this type of glitch. Think a bit, 20 to 50 full time staff, to guess roughly, are responsible for organizing this massive ONE day effort (or kinda multiple day’s in States that offer early voting). It is a logistical nightmare.
This is just a noise argument among the professional campaigners who are upset they did not get the contracts, and want it next time.
Interesting article. Especially the part about the consultants. Interesting that some of these consultants are now bashing the approach of the GOP to the electorate. One of them was the "consultant" who orchestrated the defeat of McCain in the 2008 election. Maybe an old fashioned door to door approach along with a backbone to speak the truth and fight would have served the GOP better. The Truth shall set you free. Start standing up for the Truth.
Romney's communications firm in Boston, the Shawmut Group (home of Eric "Etch a Sketch" Fehrnstrom), were a disaster. They made rivers of $$$$ and were instrumental in putting in place the ORCA boondoggle and the ineffective get out the vote non-effort. Not to mention their strategy of ignoring Obama attack ads, softening the message to RINO pablum, and the cruise to victory strategy after the Denver debate.
Did anybody consider that ORCA could probably be easily tracked by NSA, which, oh by the way, reports to the White House?
No. I don't think they could have done anything before it went operational – if you want to go "conspiracy theory" — and I call it thus – the target they would have gone after would have been the electronic voting machines. n
“Granted, turnout for Obama was off by a far greater amountu20137.7 million votersu2013 yet if Romney had brought out the same number of voters as McCain did in 2008 we would be talking about a Romney victory, not a Romney defeat.”r nr nNot sure how you arrive at this statement. In 2008, Obama received 69.5 million votes; McCain received 59.95 million votes. If Romney gets 59.95 million votes, that would still be rather less than 61.8 million votes for Obama.r n(Although not a guaranteed win, owing to the Electoral College.)