Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt-Chapter 73 - 56: The Blinded Eyes

"It’s the 21st century, yet their methods are identical to the Tammany Association’s from a hundred years ago!"

Leo asked in his mind, ’The Tammany Association? That political machine?’

"That’s right," Roosevelt said. "When I was just starting out, they used the same tactics against me."

"Back then, there were no computers, no internet, and no damn VAN System."

"But they controlled the ballot boxes and the voter registration rolls."

"On Election Day, they’d send thugs to take the ballot boxes from neighborhoods that supported me and throw them straight into the Hudson River."

"They would deliberately strike the names of my supporters from the registration rolls or change the polling station address to a location that didn’t even exist."

"They’d even have the dead crawl out of their graves to vote, as long as they had been die-hard supporters when they were alive."

"Carter Wright today is no different from Charles Murphy back then. They’ve just replaced the ballot boxes thrown into the river with a line of red code on a screen."

"They think cutting off the machine can sever our connection to the people?" 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"They think locking the database can lock away the will of the voters?"

"No!"

Roosevelt’s voice became incredibly resolute.

"The machines can be shut down, but the people are real!"

"Behind the data aren’t cold electronic signals. They’re living, breathing people!"

"Leo, listen. They closed a door, so we will carve open a window."

"They won’t let us use their database? Fine. Then we’ll build our own!"

"Using the most primitive, most brute-force methods."

Leo’s eyes snapped open. He instantly knew what to do.

"Everyone, listen to me."

Leo’s voice silenced the entire room.

"I know the situation is terrible. Carter Wright wants to blind us, to make us flail around in the dark."

"But he forgot one thing."

"The data isn’t just on that damn server. It’s in our hands, and in the hearts of every single person we’ve connected with over the past few months."

He turned to Sarah.

"Sarah, I need you to immediately export all the user interaction data from the backend of the Pittsburgh Heart YouTube channel."

"Everyone who’s given us a like, everyone who’s left a comment, everyone who’s donated to us—I want all of it. Export their IDs, the content of their comments, everything."

"This data needs to be more comprehensive than what I asked for before. This will be our list of our first and most core supporters."

Sarah froze for a second, then immediately nodded.

Leo then turned to Frank.

"Frank, I know you’ve got some old-school stuff."

"Go get that box you hide under your bed. I want those dozens of yellowed Union rosters. I want the names of the old-timers who’ve worked with you for thirty years."

"And find Margaret. She has the community center’s registration logs for every resident they’ve helped over the past twenty years."

"Bring all those records here!"

Frank pumped his fist.

"No problem! I know those names by heart, but the books are more complete! I’m on it!"

Leo finally looked at Karen.

"Karen, I know this sounds crazy and highly unprofessional."

"We’re going to do this the dumbest way possible. We’re going to take Sarah’s exported data, Frank’s Union rosters, and Margaret’s community logs, and compile all of it."

"We’re going to do it by hand, entering and cross-referencing every single record ourselves."

"Right here in this room, we are going to rebuild our very own VAN System from scratch!"

Karen looked into Leo’s eyes, which burned with fire.

Her mind raced, calculating the feasibility of this insane plan.

’The conclusion: next to zero.’

’The dozen or so people in this campaign office were supposed to input the information of over a hundred thousand voters? In modern campaigning, this was practically prehistoric.’

’It was incredibly inefficient, extremely labor-intensive, and the error rate for manual entry would be terrifyingly high.’

’For a massive campaign, this amount of data wasn’t even a drop in the bucket.’

But Karen kept these thoughts to herself.

She looked around the room.

Frank’s face, flushed red with anger; Sarah’s helpless gaze; the panic written all over the young interns’ faces.

The entire campaign headquarters was on the brink of collapse.

’If I tell them all, "It’s no use, we’re done for," the team will completely fall apart by the end of the night. In a desperate situation like this, the act itself is more important than the outcome. Leo hasn’t just proposed a dumb plan; he’s thrown a lifeline to a group of drowning people. Even if that lifeline is flimsy, even if it couldn’t possibly get them all to shore, at least it gives them something to do. It lets them forget their fear in the midst of work. As long as they keep moving, they can maintain morale. This is politics. Sometimes, appearances are more important than reality.’

Karen sighed inwardly. She decided she would indulge this young man’s madness, just this once.

If only to make the night more bearable.

"Alright."

Karen took a deep breath, kicked off her high heels, and stood barefoot on the floor.

She clapped her hands. "Since the boss has given the order, we’ll do as he says."

She turned to the intern, who was still staring blankly.

"Ben! Don’t just stand there like a log! Go to the storage room and get every spare laptop we have! If it can power on, I want it here!"