Publicani

From dailypaul.com:

On Jan 4, 2008 10:51 AM, Ben Hodges wrote:
Dear all:

I sincerely regret to inform you that today, the GOTV day, the biggest day of the whole Iowa campaign for the 300 students up here, was completely destroyed–and the circumstances point towards a deliberate sabotage.

We were told from the very beginning that all of our hard work would be nought if we didn’t hit Iowa hard on January 3rd.

Our job? Call every Ron Paul supporter in the state (our numbers were bigger than Huckabee’s), man as many precincts as possible, drive voters around, pick people up, get them back home, check voters off as they come in, &c., &c..

We were told to be ready to leave camp at 9 a.m.
…

We were ready.

But then at 2:30 in the morning, all the camp leaders received a phone call that the database the Des Moines office put together of all our phone banking and door-to-door canvassing was totally scrambled, jumbled, and even partly deleted. All the data was scattered and completely jumbled. Missing phone numbers. Missing precincts. A big box of random data. Thousands and thousands of voters.

The original file was supposed to have broken all voters down into counties and precincts. Didn’t happen.

Each page was supposed to be correlated with precinct captains and chairmen. Didn’t happen.

We were looking at a day of turning out over 17,000 voters. We maybe called 300.

We picked up nobody.

We manned no caucuses.

…

So what happened?

We were told we’d have the numbers by 11 a.m.

Then noon.

Then 2.

Then 3.

Then 4.

We finally got the numbers around 4:30. We couldn’t even print them. A couple camp leader floored it to a Kinko’s and printed them out. We got started calling at 5:15. Caucusers were supposed to show up at 6:30.

I have received word that one particular person is responsible for all this.

I’ve also heard word that this is not true. That’s why I won’t release the name.

In any case, the database the Des Moines office was supposed to be compiling was completely compromised, either technically or personally. The word used to describe the master file was “unusable.”

I don’t know what to make of this, but everyone here is super despondent.

b Hodges

–
Ben Hodges – bun@stygian.net
AIM: NoManismyname108
Cell: 770.314.1886

OMFG

If this is true, it is completely outrageous.

Why does this not suprise me?

Because I watched CSPAN 2 last night cover a Republican Caucus in Des Moines, Iowa. It took place at the Des Moines community college.

Before the vote every precinct captain for each candidate was allowed to speak for say 3-5 minutes on behalf of their candidate. Guess which candidate had NO PRECINCT CAPTAIN speaking?

Ron Paul.

I sunk into my chair in disbelief and disgust that the campaign couldn’t find someone to be a precinct captain in Des Moines?!

So this post does not suprise me in the least. The New Hampshire office better be ready for this crap and better have backup data.

Does the campaign realize we are paying them? WE ARE THE RON PAUL CAMPAIGN SHAREHOLDERS! And we demand accountability for “management’s” actions!

is this true?

no precinct captain? where else did this happen? also, any word from bev harris on vote verification/legitimacy?

Carolton?

I think it was Caroltion? or Carolton county?

It sounded something like that. And CSPAN2 showed this particular Republican Caucus from start to finish. It was cool to see them count out votes for Ron Paul. But the lack of a precinct captain stumping for Ron Paul (after listening for people stump for Giulani, and Thompson, etc) in Des Moines was disgusting to me.

It was held at the Des Moines community college.

It was Carroll

Too many people just don’t get it. My husband just did a penetration test for a large UK firm and within a few hours, he had passwords, creditcard info, vital personal info, everything. Don’t underestimate the need for security.

How long ago was Watergate? There is nothing new under the sun, be prepared

Oh my God!

If true, this is absolutely awful. As far as the one person rumored to be responsible (and I understand it’s just a rumor), but was he/she working with the RP group? Or is it an “outsider”? I am just curious, because I hope there are no “plants” in the system to do this again.

Of course there are.

In over their head

The official campaign is in over their head. They’re not ready for a big campaign. Campaign needs new management.

Nope…not new management.

They need my friends and I (3 of us total). We could provide all the networking security/admin services they could ever need, personal security for Dr. Paul (he needs it), and drastically help the campaign management keep its finger on the pulse of supporters, haters, and everyone in between. If not us, then definitely people like us.

Just make sure it doesn’t happen again

if true… there is very little recourse here and we simply need to ensure that it does not happen again.

making a fuss over this will only make us look like sore losers (right or wrong). I say just be better organized going forward… keep multiple copies of important lists in several places (discs, print outs, hard drives)

I am sorry that it happened (if true) but lets just fix the problem for future primaries.

I.T. 101

1. Back-up

2. Back-up your back-up.

Then test your backup

Backing up is good, backing up your backup is good; however, it’s also good to test the backup to ensure THAT has not been corrupted. (This oversight has put at least one company out of business for a while.)

I.T. 101 – continued

On January 4th, 2008 jaymur says:

3. Use a real DBMS, not Excel or Access!

4. Change the default admin password

5. Require complex passwords

6. Apply the security fixes

7. Restrict rights

8. Appropriate storage of the backup media

This sounds like pretty poor management of info. If these databases are so important, there should be at LEAST ONE BACKUP! Is someone making sure this doesn’t happen in NH?

Probably sabotaged by a huckster from another campaign.

All nefarious insinuations aside, I worked in Iowa for three weekends, canvassing and phone-banking. We kept pretty accurate records of the maps of the neighborhoods that we canvassed and the people we talked to on the phone. Specifically, when we identified a caucuser on our lists that supported RP and would indeed caucus, we marked our lists with the appropriate codes.

Couldn’t they have gone back over those hardcopies and at least discerned most of the data?

EMAIL EMAIL EMAILEMAIL

In the future, email the file to youself, and several trust worthy people.
There no way one person can hack into several random peoples mail box!

Easy to recover!

One of the keys……..

Is to not overreact to this situation. A thorough investigation should be done and procedures corrected so something like this is not repeated in NH.

The past is the past. Don’t be discouraged by it and give in to negativity. Fact is, we don’t know yet weather it was sabotage or not. However, it looks like it perhaps. Still EVEN IF it was, so what. RP has some powerful enemies, don’t forget that. We should EXPECT things like that.

The best thing would be a FULL REVIEW of the situation, to prevent future occurences – there’s always time to blame someone – there isn’t always time to fix the problem that allowed this to happen.

Just make sure it doesn’t happen again

if true… there is very little recourse here and we simply need to ensure that it does not happen again.

making a fuss over this will only make us look like sore losers (right or wrong). I say just be better organized going forward… keep multiple copies of important lists in several places (discs, print outs, hard drives)

I am sorry that it happened (if true) but lets just fix the problem for future primaries.

as a CEO I would say “I want answers now”

If I were the boss here, I would say that I want the name and phone number of the person who was supposed to be responsible now.

Will this kind of nonsense happen again in another state?

What is with the total nonsense that the precinct people were not armed with the files days in advance?

What is with the lack of backup? Pendrives cost notthing these days. Most database software allows Internet backup to webservers.

Ah, but they would be VERY concerned about security/privacy

and so would not (SHOULD NOT) use pendrives (or thumbdrives) etc.

It’s fairly obvious that there simply were NO disaster management procedures in place here. And that backups had been done pretty haphazardly and probably never verified or validated. This was all done “fast and loose” and therefor vulnerable to a HOST of problems, including simple corruption of the DB index and/or log files.

I can only imagine how bad

all the young people must feel. Losing all that hard work but though the hard times we learn our greatest lessons. Young Patriots we are all so grateful to you Dr. Paul pulled double digits under truly difficult circumstances. Take heart you have motivated us all and we will all be more careful moving forward. Thanks for the post.

Ditto

- thanks to all you people in Iowa for your hard work, and for bringing this to everyone’s attention.

Can anyone please verify

Is the HQ going to make a press release about this. if so this is major news, and i can get some major coverage.

I forwarded this email to the campaign

I don’t have the email addresses but I suggest this message (email) get forwarded to all the Ron Paul state campaign headquarters and someone needs to verify this with Benton asap. Send it to Trevor Lyman too. My guess is that he may have some pull. Just a guess.

I forwarded it to the national campaign asking for verification.

We’re internet saavy and yet can’t backup database data?

You freakin kidding me?

I’m trying to get a hold of

I’m trying to get a hold of a friend at the office to verify this one way or another. . .they’re all really busy today!

OK well damage is done now but…

I have a server sitting in my garage I am not using. If HQ needs an offsite backup please let me know. I work in the political polling/call center industry and manage data,polls,stats all day long. This is very frustrating and that type of ignorance or incompetence should be dealt with swiftly and if HQ wants me I will quit my current employ to come manage data for them for the rest of the campaign.

I am so angry at this moment because the GOTV effort is sooo damn important. This is really crappy news at least for me as I know personally I am educated enough and intelligent enough to keep very good backups so that if a file does get corrupted there is a recovery plan in place.

grrrr…

HQ be on the lookout for my resume tonight.

Another Example

I could not begin to count the number of times problems arose in the campaign and some motivated straight thinking grassroots supporter such as you has offered HQ assistance, information, whatever. Only to be ignored or shot down. I hope you get through to someone and thank you for your efforts.
I hope this thread is not true, is so, it only highlights the vast amount of energy and talent that was availible to the Ron Paul campaign which was not harnessed and put to use. What potential, what waste.

Who is the manager?

First of all, who is the office manager there and what did he say about it?

Why wasn’t this info stored on a CD somewhere else?

Well, there isn’t really anything anyone can do, except make sure the info is backed up. And I think the campaign manager knows about computer backups. I’ve already sent email to Iowa to ask the office manager (staffer) what’s up with that story. If he says anything happened, I’ll contact NH.

DONE, but lessons need to be learned.

On THIS one you truly do NOT know what you are talking about.

There are LOTS of 50% incompetent database managers who say “well it WAS backed up… last week” etc.

This is NOT the same as backing up files on your laptop.

This is A MULTI-USER, MISSION CRITICAL DATABASE SYSTEM — the system should be impervious to attack, and they should be able to “recover” from ANYTHING, including a fire destroying the entire building within a matter of an hour or two.

Such a system does not just need to be “backed up” — It needs to be backed up with incrementals at least HOURLY, and with FULL backups should run at least twice per day (preferably 3 times or more depending on when breaks or shift changes happen), with offsite storage of copies.

And furthermore, full test RESTORES of the backed-up data SHOULD have been done several times in the days right before the election.

Total time to setup such a system is probably less than an few hours (more like an hour or two for a competent DBA with modern equipment). Total time to TEST the backup restores would probably be a matter of less than 8 hours of actual work in the days prior to D-DAY, as most of the time should have been spent with initial “procedure validation” a week or more beforehand (or whenever the system was setup).

This is “fire drill” stuff, you need to setup a solid procedure and make certain it ALL works, then verify that you have the procedure down pat, again and again and again (the DBA or ITAdmin should be able to do a competent, clean, full restore at 3AM in the morning, while he is still half-asleep and waiting for his cup of coffee).

IMHO, anything less *IS* amateurish incompetence, period.

BTW, I do database work for a living and sadly see this kind of incompetence all the time on consults (and seldom does it result in anyone getting even reprimanded much less fired — but they seriously SHOULD BE — and long before disaster strikes.)

Removable Storage

I think they are called ‘removable storage’? I just call them ‘memory sticks’. (I’m not techy!) They could be purchased and given to key people and everyday backups are done. You can get ones that hold up to 2 GB.

Additional incompetence. Fire some people.

Why would they wait until the last minute to print out the information? The information should have been given to the students at least the day before. This is ridiculous and encapsulates the incompetency of the campaign management. Unfortunately, like all their blunders, Paul will never hear of it because they’ll shield him from it to save their own jobs. The first people that need to go are the people at the top of the campaign staff. Smarter management needs to be brought in who know how to manage an organization and its employees. Blame it on the people at the top, including Kent Snyder and the other bumpkins.

Credible complaint?

This e-mail appears credible to me based on the simple fact that he lists his name AND his cell phone number. Not very many people are willing to do that these days. It should be easy enough for someone to verify this story, and if it is true, heads need to roll.

YES, please verify!

Unfortunately TYPICAL….

I am going to assume that this is a true reporting of what happened in Iowa until someone proves it false. I just KNEW that something was screwed up last night when the numbers started rolling in. How could we have been exactly at the pre caucus poll numbers, when we ALL know that our “real world” support is easily twice that, and that there was NO WAY our people were NOT going to get the vote out. Now we know why. And, once again, the “official” campaign looks pathetic.

SO….last night a KEY get the vote out system was blown out. Ever heard of backing up files? How about the two weeks ago revelation that Ron Paul was NOT on the Ohio ballot yet? How about repeatedly giving out incorrect information on press releases, including WRONG locations and dates? How about trying to chase the herd with a FAR TOO TYPICAL/MAINSTREAM campaign that spends huge amounts of money on 30 second TV ads to be run in states ovewhelmed by candidate ads ALREADY? How about S**TTY ads! How about consistently subverting grassroots enthusiasm and creativity with endless calls for a “steady stream” of donations.

Look, I am very well read up on how the primary/delegate system works, and know that this is a 50 state race. However – LAST NIGHT WAS CRUCIAL. Momentum is a huge “identity/validity/credibility” bomb that could have been dropped last night….propelling Ron Paul and our movement into NH and beyond. We HAD to at least beat McCain, a has-been war monger that draws a lot of independent support in NH. instead, we finish behind him, and ALL DAY TODAY I have heard endless punditry saying that McCain might have been the “big winner” last night because he has credibility going into a strong state for him (the “Live Free or Die” state, by the way). We also had to at least beat the washed up TV actor with about as much enthusiasm as a corpse. Sadly, no. And PLEASE, taking solace in beating Giuliani is a joke. His campaign is dead, even Megamedia says so. His “Florida stand” strategy is like standing below a bursting dam with a pot lid for a shield.

I also have a growing concern today. How much of the 20 million is left to continue the run for the long haul? I have been flagged multiple times on this site for suggesting that the “official” campaign is NOT operating in the best interests of this revolution, and that spaced out “money bombs” would ENSURE that they COULD NOT spend all of the money in the early states, trying to look and act like some mainstream frontrunner campaign. “Traitor” and “Troll” usually preceed my comments being removed. Since our poor showing last night (and it indeed WAS if winning is on our minds), a “home run swinging”, long term, through MARCH campaign is of more importance than ever. We MUST allow the Ron Paul supporters EVERYWHERE to get a chance to vote for him.

Have you looked at the donor map on ronpaulgraphs.com lately? Look at all of those GREEN states dying for the chance to say something in this primary election. Unfortunately, I fear the “official” campaign does not see it that way. They are too busy trying to be something we are not. Or worse, they simply have no idea WHAT we are.

If we get an “official” email any day pleading for more funds to continue through February we will know how serious the problem is. All the future money bombs in the world will dry up without CREDIBLE RECOGNITION in the form of primary SUCCESS.

GET IT DONE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE! Get a bazillion supporters to sit in coffee shops all day talking. Get into the diners. Have house parties. Get Ron on local radio. Get it done. In my opinion we need at LEAST THIRD place in NH to gain back some credibility.

Sorry folks, I was going to hold my tongue until I had something more “positive” to say, but hearing the news from Iowa in this post has pretty much fried my mind right now. If you wish to innocently “explain it away” as honest *s**t happens, go right ahead……when the future of our country is at stake I refuse to be so accepting.

totally agree

official campaign needs to regroup.the tv ads need to be 60 sec vs 30 sec.
I will say it again,,,,”A New Hope” or something very similiar NEEDS to be put on television.
Most now know of the good Dr,now its his message we must sell.

Dirty Campaigning is nothing new

Dirty Campaigning is nothing new – I wish the supporters here would understand this – I have been campaigning for along time.

There are 2 types of people in the world.

Those who BACK UP critical data…

…and incompetent ID10TS!

Looks like RP campaign has the latter running it’s system there in Iowa.

Third type-

SABOTEUR’S