I just found this juicy news over at Dangerous Minds. They are reporting an article on Breitbart News that outlines the surreal failings of the Romney campaign's electronic GOTV effort dubbed "Orca". A source within the Romney campaign gave Breitbart this exclusive.
Project Orca was supposed to enable poll watchers to record voter names on their smartphones, by listening for names as voters checked in. This would give the campaign real-time turnout data, so they could redirect GOTV
resources throughout the day where it was most needed. They recruited 37,000 swing state volunteers for this.
I worked on the Colorado team, and we were called by hundreds (or more) volunteers who couldn’t use the app or the backup phone system. The usernames and passwords were wrong, but the reset password tool didn’t work, and we couldn’t change phone PINs. We were told the problems were limited and asked to project confidence, have people use pencil and paper, and try to submit again later.
Then at 6PM they admitted they had issued the wrong PINs to every volunteer in Colorado, and reissued new PINs (which also didn’t work). Meanwhile, counties where we had hundreds of volunteers, such as Denver Colorado, showed zero volunteers in the system all day, but we weren’t allowed to add them. In one area, the head of the Republican Party plus 10 volunteers were all locked out. The system went down for a half hour during peak voting, but for hundreds or more, it never worked all day. Many of the poll watchers I spoke with were very discouraged. Many members of our phone bank got up and left.
Of course, given the terrible campaign that Romney's deniers in chief ran, this is probably but a drop in the bucket of their fail. But seriously, to screw up your ground game to get out your vote on election day so spectacularly, you have to wonder about the technology dinosaurs that were on their payroll and just how successful their next job search will be.