2/06/2012

We were not cheated, but we appear to be cheating ourselves.

Ron Paul performed very poorly in Nevada on Saturday, and consequently an uproar from my fellow Ron Paul supporters has erupted all over the Internet. There are several items that need to be addressed. First of which is that evidence of a poorly run, confusing, and unnecessarily cumbersome caucus system is not the same thing as evidence of voter fraud.

What is even more puzzling, is that nobody seems to be mentioning the fact that Ron Paul outperformed the polling expectations. A LVRJ poll that was released four days prior to the election had Ron Paul at 9% and the highly respected Public Policy Poll had him at 15% the night before the election. The actual election results had Ron Paul come in at winning 19% of the total vote. While this was severely disappointing, it would seem to make the cries of voter fraud difficult to reconcile with his better than expected showing.

Put another way, say Newt Gingrich polled at those numbers leading up to the caucus and then significantly outperformed them. I imagine more people would cry foul at his higher than expected numbers, not that he was robbed of his "true" number of winning the thing outright.

There is tons of evidence of a sloppy and poorly organized Republican Party of Nevada. There is no evidence of voter fraud against Ron Paul.

The people being turned away, the mistakes of people failing to sign in etc. are all symptoms of a horribly inefficient and confusing caucus process. This happened to all people, it did not happen specifically to Ron Paul supporters.

The "special" late-night caucus demonstrated this. Why did we win so overwhelmingly there if we are unfairly being turned away? Did Ron Paul supporters commit voter fraud there to rob Mitt Romney? Of course not, so how can it be that all of Ron Paul's victories are legitimate and his losses illegitimate and indicative of voter fraud?

Is voter fraud possible in such a confusing and messy system? Absolutely. Is there any evidence it took place against Ron Paul? Absolutely not. In fact, I and other Ron Paul supporters were overwhelmingly involved in running things. Because the Nevada Republican Party is so deteriorated, an overwhelming number of site manager and precinct manger positions were left unfilled. As a result, thanks to the fantastic efforts of the Nevada Ron Paul campaign, it was our guys who were running things! Even when I returned the votes from my voting site (which I ran) back to the Republican Party HQ, I found their offices filled with both Ron Paul supporters and official members of the Ron Paul campaign staff. Resorting to cries of voter fraud for our disappointing finish only harms us and the Ron Paul campaign. It shifts our focus away from focusing on why we polled, and then subsequently performed, so poorly in Nevada. That is what we should be focusing on.

We made a concerted effort to win Mormon votes. Exit polling shows us only garnering 5% of Mormon votes. I've worked side by side with members of the Ron Paul campaign and while I was not privy to the higher level discussions and strategy planning, I can tell you those individuals worked too hard to have been aiming for merely 5% of the vote. Did we do something wrong there, either in execution of the strategy, or in choosing that strategy altogether? Could we be doing things differently or better in some respects? Should we be listening to common sense and our volunteers that tell us spam calling our supporters the night before is causing them to not caucus for us? If we are serious about winning, these should be the questions we should be asking.  Our focus should be directed towards areas of our campaign strategy that need to be tweaked and/or improved.

I feel like I've entered The Twilight Zone when a group of liberty-minded, Austrian Economics oriented, supporters act like it is unacceptable to suggest there are areas of the Ron Paul campaign that are less than optimal. I thought this blindly following the leader thing was precisely what we revile in government and the drones whom uncritically accept their propaganda? Blindly following a losing strategy is not doing Ron Paul or the campaign any favors.

Ron Paul's strengths on housing and the economy were not emphasized heavily enough here. Half of Mitt Romney voters desperately want someone else to vote for. Numerous times I experienced genuine surprise and interest when I informed these Romney "supporters" of Ron Paul's strengths in this area. The phone banking program needs serious revisions. The strategy of spam-calling supporters the night before is deeply flawed. There are several efficiency issues outside of that specific program that can be improved as well.

I understand where everyone is coming from. We were definitely robbed in 2008 here in Nevada. And quite frankly, if we were in a position to win, I wouldn't doubt they would try and cheat us again. However, priority number one should be getting us in that position to actually win! We failed to do that in Nevada and that has nothing to do with voter fraud. The more time and energy that is spent chasing this ghost is less time spent focusing on what we need to do to give us the best shot of winning.

Nevada was winnable. We failed to do so, and unfortunately it has nothing to do with voter fraud. We all have poured so much of our time and energy into this campaign. We owe it to ourselves to honestly and critically evaluate our strategy so that we can produce the highest quality campaign (including grassroots) effort possible.

30 comments:

  1. Your blog is partially true. The official campaign is a very weak organization that does not market Paul well. As you say, most voters in Nevada (and on a national level) do not even know or understand Paul's strength on housing and the economy. The official campaign failed to inform voters - and hence, RP supporters need to evaluate if their money to the official campaign is worth it as results are never adequtely seen from the official campaign. Their strategy and marketing is the worst in presidential politics.

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    1. So which part do you think is not true??

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  2. Makes sense but be prepared to be ignored and downvoted by the DP crowd - behaving like children who had their favorite toy taken away

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    1. Wow, you definitely called that one!

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    2. Cults of personality go that way. I'm on dailypaul, and it's really easy for the groupthink to set in. Heck, it happened with Ayn Rand and objectivism, it's bound to happen here, just like any other group unfortunately.

      Don't let it get you down. This was a good article that people needed to hear. The Nevada caucus was a downer for all of us, but what we need to do is focus on what happened and what didn't work. Make some corrections, and then keep trying.

      Eric Hoffer

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  3. Agree 100%

    What do you think we should do? I'm up in Washington and have done some of the spam calling thinking that its highly touted effectiveness was backed up by studied consideration. It sounds like this might not be the case.

    Another inefficiency that bothered me was in Iowa where we spent more per voter than everyone except Romney and still only managed 3rd. Youth turnout continues to be abysmal.

    Somehow the campaign core competency of an enthused and strong ground game is not being leveraged into good outcomes. Where are the marketing and operations professionals to provide us with insight?

    Each of these failures should be a teachable moment but where are the case studies to showcase what worked and what didn't?

    I know things would be hard even if the campaign were run flawlessly but if we don't put in a strong showing in Maine and Washington - let alone Super Tuesday, then we will have made things far harder than they ought.

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    1. I agree and I honestly don't know what should be done. I am trying to get some attention directed toward these issues, and have the conversation directed towards a more productive purpose.

      Hopefully those in charge take into consideration some of these comments and start to address what isn't working.

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  4. Robert, how do you explain that RP got only 91 more votes this time than in 2008? That makes no sense when Ron Paul's notoriety has been increasing steadily across the country for months. And also, why do you assume those of us who suspect fraud think the fraud consisted of voters being turned away? I think it consisted of ballots being *thrown* away. The showing of that late night vote being overwhelmingly in favor of RP supports my view. Is there hard evidence of fraud? Well, of course not absent of an investigation, but there is reason for a reasonable person to be suspicious. You are being too dismissive. Unless you're leaving something out of the story. If you witnessed the Ron Paul campaign people being really flaky and goofing off, well then I guess that's another story. Anyway, all that said, this was either fraud or the Ron Paul campaign is run by some pretty serious losers. --Lisa

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    1. I am totally fine with being suspicious. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying to claim that, despite polling at 9% and 15% the night before the election, voter fraud is why we lost, makes no sense at all. If we polled at 50% and then came in at 20%, I would have to agree.

      To address some of your points: Not improving your vote count in one state as much as earlier ones, is not evidence of voter fraud! Since Nevada has an infinitely smaller total voting base than, say Florida, there is less room to grow votes. Perhaps in 2008 the campaign did not focus as heavily on the earlier states. The traditionally libertarian Nevada was more receptive and open to Paul in 2008 than the other states were. Who knows? There are so many possible reasons, to conclude voter fraud is just lying. It's assuming what you are trying to prove and beneath us as honest supporters of Ron Paul.

      Even ignoring all of the above, why is there no mention of the fact that total votes cast in Nevada decreased by 25% since 2008?

      Well if the total votes decreased by 25% but you still produced the same number of absolute votes, your total votes won as a percentage increased, not decreased! To make it simpler, if only 1k people voted this year instead of 32k and Ron Paul "only" won 750 of those votes for 75% of the vote, is that obvious voter fraud as well?

      In regards to your concerns that ballots were thrown away, I was a site manger and oversaw 50 precincts. In fact many of our guys were site managers all over the state and the official campaign was present at Clark County Republican HQ when votes were being delivered. The Ron Paul campaign even had lawyers present for the vote counting process!

      All I am saying is that I want us to be in a position where we can win, and if voter fraud occurs, we obviously would deal with it. I find it foolish to spend all this time focusing on alleged voter fraud over whether or not we finished a full 30 points behind Romney or only 25.

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  5. It's so obvious.......VOTING FRAUD!!!!!!!

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  6. Thanks for your analysis, and it goes some way to reassuring those of us confused and suspicious by what happened in Nevada. It is worth remembering that Nevada was a closed caucus, and those independents and democrats who voted for Dr Paul in earlier states (yes, I know not all of them) couldn't have any influence here, even if they did go to his rallies. We're stuck with the GOP and its registered members (in many states). I am sure there are clever people in the RP campaign, not least Dr Paul himself, and they must be thinking of the best way to spread the message and influence the outcome. There seems little doubt that Dr Paul could seriously challenge the President, and that ought to be what the GOP thinks about. Romney is very unlikely to beat him, and Gingrich and Santorum definitely aren't. There will not be a Republican in the White House without the support of independents and some current Democrats, and only one candidate takes those swing voters away from the President. With respect, the GOP needs to get serious.

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  7. I have a couple of questions:

    1) The Ron Paul campaign had ID'ed over 22000 supporters in Nevada who had committed to caucus for Ron Paul. That number does not even include the number who would be persuaded by RP supporters DURING the caucus. So you're telling us not to question that only 25% of the committed supporters showed up, when Ron Paul supporters are not arm chair voters?

    2) The NV GOP claims that this was a low turnout year, that only roughly half as many caucused as in 2008. Really? How many articles and clips have we seen of complete chaos at MANY caucus sites that were overrun with people. Well yeah. If you disposed of 15K RP votes, it would appear that NV had a small turnout. The caucus sites were staffed for expected turnout, but the turnout was double the expectations, thus the chaos.

    3) In every proceeding state, RP has delivered roughly three times the support of 2008, but in Nevada, he gets only 150 votes more?

    I did not previously believe that this was a conspiracy to commit fraud, the there is a definite reason that RP has attorneys in Nevada right now, and they've set up a special website JUST to collect information. I appreciate the attempt to quell fears, but I believe your analysis is misguided.

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    1. Jeff, I think I answered all of your questions in my replies to others here.

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  8. I would appreciate a numerical report from you for at least you own caucus since you were there on the ground and actively involved. How does it compare with the eventual official result? You have said nothing about the votes actually received and this is one of the main complaints although based upon only sporadic anecdotal evidence. If you had these numbers it would make a difference.

    I have suggested that a secure web site be set up by highly visible leaders of the RP community like the webmasters at DP and RPF as well as RevPAC so that RP activists who attend caucuses can register the actual votes received for each candidate in every caucus. This will give us hard evidence if there has been any tampering with the votes rather than merely anecdotal evidence.

    You say that the Mormon voters were not given the information about RP positions on housing and the economy that they needed to change to Ron Paul. Ron Paul gave a press conference on precisely these very subjects just before the caucuses. Are you saying that you and you fellow volunteers didn't follow up on these press conference announcements? You say that fifty percent of Mormons "desperately want" another candidate to vote for other than Romney. What evidence do you have for this claim and what were the RP policy sticking points you came up against that persuaded such desperate people to vote for Romney after all?

    BTW there was one local newspaper poll that gave RP 24% on February 2nd. I would tend to trust local polls rather than national polling firms that are owned by the opposition. It is very easy to frame poll questions to gain pre-determined results. They do not have to be strictly speaking fraudulent. Another pollster CEO said it was impossible to poll Nevada and that they always get it wrong.

    Good to hear from someone on the ground. Thank you.

    David Robertson

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    1. I intern for the official campaign. I do not know if I am allowed to disclose the vote counts. I do know that the people running the campaign here have all the data and have said we had a very low turnout of people tagged RP supporters.

      There are many reasons for this. The first is the total number of tagged RP supporters is inflated. At least 10% of them were not actually RP supporters and were erroneously tagged, or had since changed their minds etc. The second is that many people whom we had nudged over to our side were extremely offended and annoyed by our relentless spam calling them the night before. Some even explicitly said they were no longer going to caucus for Ron Paul. Waking up at 7am on a Saturday morning to caucus is not fun, these people decided not to.

      Some probably just didn't show up. That's what the Ron Paul campaign is reporting. Our attorneys are in Nevada to guard against voter fraud. The campaign did a fantastic job getting our guys out there running the elections and involved in every step. We reported what we found. What we found was evidence of a much lower than expected turnout, not voter fraud. The attorneys witnessed the final count and signed off on it. To repeat, those calling voter fraud are directly contradicting what we here in the campaign saw.


      I didn't say Mormon voters weren't given info, I said in general there was not enough emphasis on the housing/economy strengths of Ron Paul. I think you misinterpreted my point. My point is that the average Romney supporter does not support him very strongly, but merely thinks he is better than the other choices. I live here and can attest that there were zero advertising/outreach efforts to educate people on Ron Paul's enormous strengths on housing. (With the exception of the billboard I put up!)

      The only local newspaper that did a poll that I know of is the Las Vegas Review Journal which had Ron Paul at 9%. If you can link to that poll you cite as having him at 24%, I would very much like to see it. This is an issue that everyone continues to dodge. The polls had us at 9-15% and we expected to win? If Romney was at those poll numbers and then won, would we think that was legitimate? If not, why should our guy be expected to legitimately outperform his polling numbers by 300%, otherwise it is evidence of voter fraud?

      I will tell you what happened at my precinct. My precinct I worked hard for months. I got 24 tagged RP supporters. 7 showed up. After I counted all the votes for my site and sealed them and delivered them to Republican Party HQ, I ran into many Ron Paul people already there at HQ. They all reported disappointing turnouts and losses.

      The whole argument of voter fraud is based on self-contradictory logic and circumstantial evidence. Why we did win the Adelson caucus by such a big margin if we were being turned away unfairly or having our votes thrown out? Why is that location deemed to be legitimate (because we did well) but other locations where we lose are "obvious voter fraud"?

      Those who continue to point to voter fraud as why we lost continue to miss the real issues we should be addressing. They also have no evidence and continue to directly go against what we here in Nevada and the official Ron Paul campaign found to be the case.

      Yes, voter fraud is possible. Even if it did occur, it did not account for the 30 points we lost to Romney by, however. That's all I am saying. What sense does it make to direct our focus on this and not, instead, on ways we can be increasing our support base.

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    2. This is a very clear explanation Robert and I wish more people could hear it. I will see if I can find that link but frankly it seems unnecessary now that you have explained the context of the situation so well. The essence of it seems to be that people simply didn't turn out. What this suggests to me, and this is not a criticism of anyone, is that they were not as fully sold as we have come to expect RP supporters to be. In other words their support was soft and undependable. Why?

      They do not understand the true condition of their country and the world or they would come out whatever the circumstances. My suggestion would be to call back on the people who didn't turn up and ask them why. Find out if your assumptions about the phone calls is accurate. Perhaps the phone banking can be tweaked to counter this effect. Perhaps taking time to explain the condition the country is in in more depth might help. This is the problem: the more votes RP gets the softer the support will be unless...there is follow up and continuing education.

      Once again thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Robert. It has helped me to understand a little better what happened and I will use this information in other conversations.

      David Robertson

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    3. You are very welcome, David. I think your comments about the softer nature of support as we expand our reach into people whom are still unfamiliar with the philosophy of liberty is spot on, and probably played a big role in the low turnout, as well.

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  9. I've was involved in Nevada politics and it's a very sleezy business. Don't get me wrong. Politics is a sleazy business in general but in Nevada it's rampant. Anything connected to Sheldon Adelson is bad news. I'm so grateful to be out of that business.

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  10. While you have a valid point, that without PROOF that foul play happened, it didn't, the fact remains that there were Paul supporters turned away for not testifying to their religious beliefs in order to gain the right to vote, and that is wrong and illegal. It is not enough to change the outcome, but it is proof that some crooked practices did happen.

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  11. I'm not buying it. Didn't the Ron Paul pollster predict much bigger numbers. You don't get this kind of enthusiasm for a candidate and have weak turnout. It's easy for "official" pollsters to tweak the numbers to have Paul down, then they throw out ballots in confirmation.

    If you're with the campaign, you guys need to do a better job at managing election fraud. Some of us supporters are getting tired of working so hard to have the campaign drop the ball. Or if this was the case and there really wasn't election fraud, why the hell didn't someone from the campaign make a statement after the election

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  12. Robert,

    You mentioned polling and we all know it's a joke. How longer people will continue to trust the media and their polling agencies?

    Look up for yourself of all the evidences concerning blackouts, lyings, general deception etc. The machine is very sophisticated.

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  13. oh HELL! we all know that if there was voter..etc. fraud, THEY would admit to it! so what is the big deal, there was no fraud and that is that!

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  14. I used to live in Las Vegas, and I'm so glad you've helped to assuage my fears of vote fraud. I used to have the attitude that assumed that if a guy like Ron Paul wasn't doing well, it must be because of media bias, misinformation, etc. None of that stuff helps, but I'd like to think that most of the people that show up to caucuses and primaries have spent a considerable amount of time looking at each candidate compared to the rest of the country. Most people just plain don't see why they should care.

    I think this is another reason you make a strong point: more talk of vote fraud only presents one more argument for why you might as well stay home on caucus day.

    I don't know how poorly the Ron Paul campaign has been running things. It seems like it has done things just fine. Attacking Gingrich and Santorum but not Romney is probably very smart. Skipping Florida was also smart. I would wager that they were overconfident with Nevada, but that's all I can think of.

    As for my part, since I live in Arizona - which has the unfortunate position of being a Winner-take-all Closed Primary - I would have to say that he should tread carefully with regard to immigration in the debate in Phoenix. Arizona is actually quite divided: Tucson (where I live) is very liberal, and the rest is pretty much conservative, except for parts of Phoenix. Ending the drug war and reducing welfarism would realistically do far more good for our state than any other policy, but I hope he does not focus on these things because it is a Closed Primary. He should focus on strengthening the borders, less on foreign policy (which he talks about WAY more than he probably should), and more on state's rights. The issue Arizona Republicans have with Obama as distinct from other states is that only Arizona took the matter of the border problem into its own hands when the Federal government failed to do so.

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  15. This is an excellent article. It is just too easy to blame voter fraud when the problem is a poor campaign.

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  16. i think RP has maxed out because, while his domestic and economic policies are sound, his foreign affairs policy (the Iran approach is Exhibit A)are suicidal for America. He appears whacky on that front to a vast majority of the GOP and the Dems as well.

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    1. It is fine to disagree on policy issues, of course. But to blindly repeat the mantra that Ron Paul's foreign policy is suicidal makes you sound foolish. It's also highly insulting to the CIA (whose chief of the Osama Bin Laden task force endorses Paul) as well as to our troops. Troops whom overwhelmingly support Ron Paul both in their financial donations and their words.

      Anyways, if you are interested in discovering some facts regarding Iran, this article by David Henderson is a great place to start!

      Is Iran a Threat?

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  17. I am a grassroots volunteer who worked closely with the campaign as well as being an insider in the ''party''.

    From our Chairman changing the caucus process (which had been in place for almost a year) 6 weeks before the caucus, to adding an additional 16 locations, to redistricting, to Ron Paul supporters being called 10 times in the days before the caucus, to placing unattainable phone quotas on the Youth for Ron Paul, to using a losing phone id strategy, to not taking anything and everything grassroots suggested seriously...I can go on and on.

    There was no vote obvious vote fraud to speak of in Clark County, and that is coming from one who arrived at HQ at 1 PM and assisted with recording of votes until midnight. What there was happened to be bad data, apathetic employees tasked with things that the passionate grassroots would have done for gas money, a general lack of communication by the campaign to grassroots, etc...

    So much to learn from and do better. I am hoping the campaign asks the right questions and learns from their mistakes. It's unfortunate their seems to be a lack of desire to do so.

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  18. I'm not from Nevada (and Nevada may have been a much different story) but one of the biggest mistakes I saw in the Ron Paul campaign is not organizing an official ground structure in the states early enough. Lots of well-meaning, enthusiastic grassroots supporters were wanting to have something to do but nobody was in a position to delegate to them. Many of these volunteers spent time doing things that were not the best use of their time or resources. There were some great natural leaders that wanted to step forward and lead the grassroots but they had no authority to do so on behalf of the campaign and couldn't provide authority to make decisions and plans, nor secure support materials for the grassroots. This long wait for the campaign to organize a state team left way to much room for many competing interests to squabble over who should be in charge. The campaign finally appointed state and regional directors a few weeks before the caucus when Ron Paul was scheduled to appear in the state. All focus then turned to the events and there was not the manpower or resources available to actually focus on getting the vote out right before the caucus.

    Because Ron Paul's platform is not what people are used to hearing, it takes some time for people to come around once they hear his message and begin to look into him more. This is especially true with older (indoctrinated) voters. The youth who haven't been indoctrinated into party politics grasp his message quicker. For this reason I suspect, but could be wrong, that it might pay off better if Ron Paul were to hold his rallies & town halls more in advance of election dates so that 1) the people have time to come around to Ron Paul's ideas once they are energized and they have time to talk to their family, friends and neighbors about Ron Paul, and 2) the local grassroots volunteers have time to recover from a "big rally" before the election and organize a method of follow-up and getting in touch with those who came out to the rallies with personal visits, literature or phone calls.

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