November 10, 2012

Republican Pollwatcher in Aurora CO calls authorities on people Voting While Black/Brown:

November 9, 2012

Florida DUers: What's the outrage factor against Rick Scott about how the election was handled?

Not just among Democrats. What are people saying at the office and the supermarket?

Is the election fiasco going to be an issue when Scott is up for reelection in 2014? Will he even run?

November 9, 2012

Florida's Gigantic Ballot: Was this on purpose?

So the actual ballots in Miami-Dade were these gigantic booklets packed with all kinds of amendments to vote on.

Pretty obvious that this would add substantially to the amount of time for each voter to vote (probably even if they were to skip voting on the amendments), and it's REALLY obvious that it adds substantially to the time for tallying the vote. So much so that it's half a week after the election without a result.

Who was responsible for making the ballot like this, when the result would be fairly obvious? Was it the SoS or legislature who put all this stuff on there? When were the amendments added on?

If on purpose, was the goal simply to

-depress turnout from big city ethnic voters just getting discouraged waiting

-specifically cause a situation where the state wouldn't be counted or called on election night?

-both/other?

November 9, 2012

Push all the angry righties you know towards paper ballots and abolishment of the EC.

There is a significant current among angry righties to say the election was stolen. They have no evidence of any of this, it's more a matter that they just can't believe the results so it MUST be that.

I don't want people to think that because I think it causes problems governing for the President and it keeps those people from realizing where they are wrong.

But, if they're going to think things like that, we should utilize their unreasonable bitterness to move the country towards a better election system. If they're going to be paranoid about stolen votes, point out that electronic voting systems with no paper ballot to recount offer the best chance to do this. That a national popular vote makes the votes of people in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama mattter (as well as New York and California, hehe but you don't have to point that out).

Also, you should ask people promoting the stolen election idea how it was that Obama stole the election in so many huge states run by GOP governors, secretaries of state and legislatures?

November 9, 2012

Interesting posts from a message board with GOP GOTV people discussing the problems they had:

I have no idea if the site is legit but it certainly reads like it. Interesting stuff, especially their compare/contrast to what they knew or could observe of Obama's operation:

It's not technology - it's people. 99% of this comes down to ground game at the precinct level on Election Day. The County Party has to have Precint Captains that are organized, dedicated, and willing to hand-hold volunteers. Think platoon sergeant or squad leader.I worked in Northern Virginia - PWC. I started out with a very motivated and dedicated precinct captain - phone calls and emails weeks and days in advance. On Election day at 0530 she had a portable tent set up at the poll, a table, stickers and literature, a portable propane heater,coffee, phones and phone numbers for everybody and their grandmother in Party, and a rock solid schedule with volunteers that promised to show up. Every little hiccup and snafu was promptly reported up the chain of command and resolved
I was later dispatched to another precinct, one on the east side of Route 1 - a heavy blue area, because that captain or the person above him had failed to secure an adequate number of reliable volunteers ahead of E-Day. The contrast could not have been deeper. It was like the precinct captain was just going through the motions. I ended up spending the rest of the day there, freezing my ass off, doing what I could to get as many R's cast as I could. We were totally outmatched, however. I could not believe the number of voters that were driven to the polls by Obama's team. Parking was really tight (it was a school with poor parking) and the entrance to the poll was at the middle of the bus loop, so I could see the Obama drag and drop operation first hand. They had quite the operation going.
If you look at the PWC precinct data for the D-rich precincts in the east end of the county, you will see how we were simply slaughtered by the GOTV effort in "their" precincts in what used to be a reliably Republican county.
Stay turgid, morons.

Flabbergasted to see people arguing that it doesn't matter. It's an election, you win withvotes Not ideas, not advertising, not anything but VOTES. The gotv effort is the most fundamental aspect of the campaign, where the rubber meets the road. It's the only tangible thing in the process that directly impacts the outcome for goodness sakes.
Would be great if 51% of the population were motivated, hardcore conservativeslike us, but they aren't. They aren't on the other side either, but they are kicking our butt ontargeting the actual people and getting the actual votes on election day (and before).
After all this mental masturbation the last 2 days about messaging, philosophy, demographics, here is one where there's no discussion or debatenecessary. Wewill improveour chances to win by simply getting better at targeting and gotv. They are better at it than we are.This is the first place we should start.
And thanks for sharing your experience. Hopefully someone in the organization reads it.

Another thing, the GOP obsession w/ tv ads defies explanation. SuperPACs could have spent another $100 million this month on ads for Romney and the outcome would have been the same. The ones that are effective are targeted and saying something that stands out or that people don't know aobut. For example,those dumbObama ads on Romney's tax returns and private equity experience really helped him, b/c the average person didn't know Romney yet and b/c Romney wasn't on the air himself during that time.Or likeradio ads targeting specific groups like w/ Obama to women on contraception. I mean, think how devestating radio ads on spanish channels could have been telling people the Catholic church was actually suing Obama. Or adsin blue collar white areas in Ohioabout how Obamacare was leading full time jobs to become part time. TV ads are expensive andhave to address big, broad subjects, while they kick our butts on the small things. The small things areperfect for radio and direct mail, and since they're cheaper you can target exactly the group you want with an ad that matters to them and might actually change a mind.
And if someone had a SuperPAC to develop innovative gotv systems and databases for targeting, I'd invest in that, as it woul dactually be a competitive advantage, not another ad on tv. The value ofTV adsis long since passed, they don't really work, the return on investment on them has become very small relative to the cost.

Over the weekend I wanted to volunteer. I went to Mitt's web site and clicked "Volunteer". Totally useless, just generic bullshit about where to register to vote in my state and a link to my state's election's web site. Uhm, yeah thanks for that info I never would have thought to check there first. Not to metion this is 4 days before the election when the registration deadline had long passed in my state. Oh and of course front and center there was the DONATE button, even though just a couple of days earlier I read the campaign had more money than it knew what to do with.

So I finally stumbled on the call from home app. Damn thing crashed on me twice before it finally started working. I started making calls. The script was awful. It was a poll on who are you going to vote for. WTF? You're calling Republican likely voters and that's what you want to know, who are you likely to vote for...again 4 days before the election? The script should be Hi this is John calling to remind you to vote. Do you need a ride to the polls? None of this hi this is John and I'm doing a quick survey about the election. Last thing anyone in Ohio or Iowa wants is another polling company calling.

And here's the best part...before doing all this, on Friday I sent an email to the campaign saying basically I live in this city, my state is solid blue but I want to help out in other ways. Here's my phone number, here's my email address. Get in touch with me. I still have yet to get a reply to that email.

Absolutely pathetic GOTV operation all around. This is why IMO Obama won. He used Faceboo, Twitter to perfection. He used data mining to find out to the street level who voted and got someone out there to drag them kicking and screaming to the polls. They did early voting campaigns, again micro targeted at the people they knew would be too lazy to get to the polls on election day.

What do we do? Not even answer an email from someone asking to volunteer.

Pathetic. Just fucking pathetic.

And the even more pathetic thing is in 2016 it will be the same thing.

November 8, 2012

Romney Campaign Concedes FL

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/08/3087995/romney-campaign-we-lost-florida.html

November 8, 2012

GOP candidates henceforth will be equipped with a special device during campaigns.

Whenever their mouths begin to form the word "rape", the device will deliver a powerful and painful electrical shock, paralyzing the candidate for several seconds.

November 8, 2012

The Onion.com is on FIRE right now. Just go, and feast on the headlines.

Go on, now!

November 7, 2012

One of the reasons Trump is so pissed:

It just occurred to me that one of the reasons Trump is so pissed off is because he figured his critical endorsement would buy him the ability to pop in and out of the White House and use it to pimp his horrible shows and ego. "Me big important man, friend of President who take advice from ME."

Now the best he can do is show up to a WH Correspondent's Dinner and have President Obama give him noogies on national TV again.