Comments on: The Crash That Was Romney’s Election Day Get-Out-the-Vote Effort

By: lection Shenanigans Update: Voting Early and Often? Magic Boxes? Or Some Kind of Mistake? We’ll See | theraineyview

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 17:53:43 +0000

[...] be decided in the Rockies or parts east) Obama’s well-planned GOTV, Romney’s apparent hi-tech-GOTV fiasco, according to some news sites, Panthers watching polls, military ballot issues, thrown-away [...]

By: ken masugi

ken masugi — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 01:24:42 +0000

I was wondering why, when I walked precincts late on election day, the voting information was stale. A friend of mine was driving voters to the polls, but that operation knocked off early in the day.

By: Robert Cheeks

Robert Cheeks — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:49:12 +0000

Could Pete or someone run the numbers of evangelicals and Tea Partiers who voted in this election as compared with ’10?

Again, nominate a REAL conservative, not a RINO/neo, get behind him or her and we win. But, do the elite, monied interests win?

By: Pete Spiliakos

Pete Spiliakos — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:22:57 +0000

Pseudoplotinus, I agree with all of that, but I do wonder how much better Romney would have done with a better organized GOTV effort. Romney lost Colrado by almost 5%. It could easily hve tipped Virginia.

By: Carl Eric Scott

Carl Eric Scott — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:02:59 +0000

Probably not decisive, but appalling. From what I could tell here in more rural VA (Lexington) lots of communication problems between central and local GOP offices. Signs, for example, were a month late. Early October, the website gave you a disconnected telephone number for the local office. When I asked the local volunteers why, they looked exasperated, and about to enter into a long, long, explanation how hard it had been dealing with central on this, before I encouraged them to save their energy for other tasks. Things like that.

By: Pseudoplotinus

Pseudoplotinus — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 23:49:49 +0000

Pete, he was certainly better than the Republican alternatives, but from what I’m reading, when compared to Mccain in 2008 only incrementally better, if that. So in a presumably more advantageous election environment, Romney’s organization could only achieve an incremental improvement over 2008.

During the election the Repubs in the know were talking about an ‘intensity gap’ that was supposed to translate into a turnout advantage for Romney. But the lesson from this years election appears to be that the democratic candidate, atleast if that candidate is Obama, doesn’t need to have more enthusiastic support to beat his Republican rival. Atleast if that candidate is Romney.

The reasons are still unfolding, but this article would certainly point out one determinitive cause.

By: Pete Spiliakos

Pete Spiliakos — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 23:14:13 +0000

Kate, I don’t think Romney’s win had much to do with GOTV as such outside of a few places. He was fine at a lot of the blocking and tackling. His events were well organized. He was able to get his name on the ballot in Virginia. He didn’t have trouble signing up enough people to be delegates in Pennsylvania (unlike Rick Santorum.) But I think his real strengths (which have to do with organization) were:

1. He was the best prepared and most disciplined debater by a wide margin. This is more impressive since he wasn’t more talented than Gingrich and maybe even a better coached Santorum.

2. He was able to raise huge money to carpet bomb his less well funded opponents. Perry could probably have competed here if he hadn’t blown up in the first few debates

3. He was able to tap into the networks of existing office holder since he got way more endorsements than anybody else.

None of this is to say his GOTV organization was bad. He needed a good one for his Iowa showing. It was just a different scale than the general election campaign and his main competition was weak in this area. That wasn’t his situation in the general

By: Pseudoplotinus

Pseudoplotinus — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 22:25:52 +0000

Well, as frightening as it may be to contemplate, it’s very possible that the only relevant expertise that a community organizer brings to the presidency are strong grass roots organization skills, amplified, in the case of the Obama campaign, by a competant information technology team.

In contrast, the typical corporate executive only knows how to execute from the top down, be he conservative or not.

The irony is nauseating.

By: Kate Pitrone

Kate Pitrone — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:56:52 +0000

That is just depressing. However, also depressing are the numbers of young men I am hearing from saying they didn’t vote or voted for the Libertarian or Constitution Party candidates because Romney was the same as Obama and not a true conservative.

But this — the story in the primary was that Romney won because of superior organization. What happened?

By: Pseudoplotinus

Pseudoplotinus — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:48:39 +0000

Sigh.

This instanciates what I have experienced in the corporate world almost universally when it comes to the upper upper eschalons of executive management. A fascination with high powered technology that inevitably collapses at the point of execution. It’s just a variation of the command and control approach among the corporate worlds equivalents in the public sector.

Perhaps Mr. Romney’s loss is a blessing in disguise.

As a process engineer who actually is responsible for processes on the shop floor, I recommend some my conservative operative friends start reading THIS from front to back and learn how to create something that is actually executable. It’s not sexy, but it works.

http://www.amazon.com/Gemba-Kaizen-Commonsense-Continuous-Improvement/dp/0071790357/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352497373&sr=8-1&keywords=gemba+kaizen