novelnext Chapter 56 The Eyes That Were Gouged Out
Chapter 56 The Eyes That Were Gouged Out
There are less than three months left until the Democratic primary.
Inside Leo's campaign headquarters, Karen Miller sat in the center of the room, directing the polling team and data analysts.
Frank was yelling into the phone in a corner, arranging a street sweeping event to be held in the North District tomorrow.
Sarah, wearing headphones, stared at three screens, her fingers flying across social media comments.
Everything seemed to be in good order.
Until the intern in charge of data entry, Ben, let out a terrified scream.
"Karen, something's happened! We can't log into the VAN system!"
The shout instantly cut off the noise in the room.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look at the terminal in the corner.
Karen Miller reacted the fastest.
She dropped her pen and rushed behind Ben.
"What's going on? Is there a network problem?"
"No...it's not the internet." Ben's voice trembled. "It says my account is locked."
Karen pushed the laptop aside and sat down at the keyboard herself.
She entered her administrator account and password, which was the key to the highest level of access for the entire campaign team.
Press Enter.
The screen flickered.
The familiar interface that should have appeared, filled with green data bars and a blue map, did not show up.
The screen displayed a glaring red dialog box with only one line of black text.
Warning: Your access has been suspended.
There is a line of smaller print below that provides further explanation.
"Reason: According to the 14th amendment to the Democratic National Committee's Data Compliance Charter, which stipulates the 'Security Assessment of Third-Party Data Interfaces,' the account is suspected of serious data security violations and is currently undergoing an internal security review by the Allegheny Democratic Committee. If you have any questions, please contact the administrator."
Karen stared at the line of text and frowned.
She is a seasoned campaign manager who has faced smear campaigns from opponents, broken funding chains, and even candidates' sex scandals.
But this time, she sensed something unusual.
Leo walked over and stood behind her.
"Karen, what's wrong?"
Karen turned around, looked at Leo, and took a deep breath.
"We are unable to log in to the VAN system."
"VAN system..."
Leo muttered to himself, recalling the introductory material he had initially seen when learning about the entire mayoral election.
The VAN system, short for Voter Activation Network, is a massive database established by the Democratic National Committee.
That system contains all the information about every registered Democratic voter in Pittsburgh.
Their names, addresses, and phone numbers.
Their voting history over the years, whether they voted in primaries or only in general elections.
Their specific views on gun control and environmental issues were detailed, even down to whether they owned dogs, what magazines they subscribed to, and who they had donated to last time.
Throughout Leo's entire campaign strategy, everything from which doors Frank's ground-knocking team should knock on, who they should call, and what kind of flyers to distribute to which neighborhoods was all based on data from this system.
Upon hearing the news, the room fell silent.
Everyone realized the seriousness of the problem.
This was clearly not a technical glitch; it was a precise sniper shot.
"It's Cartwright."
Frank squeezed out the name through gritted teeth.
"No one but that bastard could do something like this."
Karen nodded: "The Allegheny Democratic Committee, which is our local party branch, holds local administrator privileges for the VAN system."
"The chairman of that committee was a longtime friend of Cartwright."
"They locked our accounts under the pretext of 'security violations,' and by the time that so-called internal review was over, the primary election was already finished."
"They are exploiting the rules to cheat legally."
Leo felt a strong wave of dizziness.
He could almost picture Cartwright sitting in his office, a glass of red wine in hand, watching the chaos unfold and letting out a smug, cold laugh.
All eyes in the room eventually turned to him.
He's the boss; he has to come up with a solution.
But he really had no other choice at that moment.
Leo instinctively wanted to call out that name in his mind.
The mentor who always provided guidance when he was in despair.
But he gritted his teeth and swallowed back the plea for help that was on the tip of his tongue.
You can't cry for help every time you encounter trouble.
If he can't even overcome this level of administrative barriers, and if he always has to rely on Roosevelt to clean up his messes, what makes him qualified to govern a city? What makes him think he's better than Cartwright?
Leo forced himself to take a deep breath, trying to get his brain working again, trying to find even a glimmer of light in this pitch-black dead end.
But he failed.
A sense of powerlessness washed over him wave after wave.
"Mr. President..."
"Relax, kid."
That was Roosevelt's voice.
"I know what you're thinking; you want to shoulder this yourself. That's good; it shows you have backbone."
"But you don't need to despair over such a clumsy trick, nor do you need to feel like the sky is falling."
"Because it's so unimaginative."
"This is a bunch of hopeless idiots!"
There was not a trace of panic in Roosevelt's voice.
"Leo, look at them, this is the enemy we are facing."
"It's the 21st century, and their methods are still exactly the same as the Tammany Society's a hundred years ago!"
Leo asked in his mind, "The Tammany Association? That political machine?"
"That's right," Roosevelt said. "They treated me the same way when I first started out."
"Back then, there were no computers, no internet, and no damn VAN system."
"But they control the ballot boxes, they control the voter registration books."
"On election day, they will send thugs to throw the ballot boxes from the neighborhoods that support me directly into the Hudson River."
"They would deliberately cross the names of voters who supported me off the register, or change the address of the polling station to a place that doesn't even exist."
"They would even have the dead crawl out of their graves to vote, as long as the dead person was a staunch supporter of theirs in life."
"The Cartwrights of today are no different from Charles Murphy of yesterday; they've just turned the ballot boxes thrown into the river into a line of red code on a screen."
"Do they think that by cutting off the machines, they can sever our connection with the people?"
"Do they think that by locking down the database, they can lock down the will of the voters?"
"No!"
Roosevelt's voice became incredibly firm.
"Machines can be cut off, but people are alive!"
"Behind the data are not cold electronic signals, but living, breathing people!"
"Leo, listen, they close a door, so we'll break a window ourselves."
"They won't let us use their database? Fine, then we'll build our own!"
"Use the most primitive and clumsy methods."
Leo suddenly opened his eyes, and he immediately thought of a way to deal with it.
"Listen to me, everyone."
Leo's voice silenced the entire room.
"I know the situation is bad. Cartwright wants to blind us and make us fight in the dark."
But he forgot one thing.
"The data isn't just in that damn server; it's in our hands, in the hearts of everyone we've met in the past few months."
He turned to Sarah.
"Sarah, I need you to export all the fan interaction data from the 'Heart of Pittsburgh' YouTube channel backend immediately."
"Export the IDs and messages of everyone who has liked our posts, left comments, or donated to us."
"This time the data is more complete than the data I requested before. This is our first list of core supporters."
Sarah paused for a moment, then immediately nodded.
Leo then turned to Frank.
"Frank, I know you have some old antiques."
"Bring me that box you've been hiding under the bed. I want your dozens of yellowed union rosters, and I want the list of those old brothers who've been with you for thirty years."
"Also, go find Margaret; she has a register of all the residents who have received help from the community center over the past twenty years."
"Move all those notebooks here!"
Frank swung his fist hard.
"No problem! I've memorized all those names, but the notebook has a more complete list! I'll go right now!"
Leo looked at Karen one last time.
"Karen, I know this sounds crazy and unprofessional."
"We'll use the most basic method: we'll compile all the data Sarah exported from the internet, Frank's union roster, and Margaret's community register."
"We need to use our hands, manually, to enter and check each entry one by one."
"We're going to rebuild our own VAN system from scratch right here in this room!"
Karen looked into Leo's eyes, which were burning with fire.
Her brain was racing, calculating the feasibility of this crazy plan.
The conclusion is: almost zero.
How can a dozen or so people in the campaign office input information for hundreds of thousands of voters?
In modern election campaigns, this is practically primitive.
It is extremely inefficient, consumes a great deal of manpower, and the error rate of manual data entry is alarmingly high.
This amount of data is not even a drop in the ocean compared to the massive election campaign.
However, Karen didn't say it aloud.
She looked around.
Frank's face was flushed with anger, Sarah's eyes were filled with confusion, and the young interns' faces were filled with panic.
The entire campaign headquarters is currently on the verge of collapse.
If we tell everyone now, "It's no use, we're doomed," then this team will fall apart completely tonight.
In such dire circumstances, the action itself is more important than the outcome of the action.
Leo's solution wasn't just a clumsy one; he was throwing a plank of wood to the drowning people.
Even if the plank is small, even if it can't carry everyone to the other side, at least it gives people something to do and allows them to temporarily forget their fear while they are busy.
As long as we get moving, morale can be maintained.
That's politics; sometimes, stance is more important than facts.
Karen sighed inwardly; she decided to go along with this young man's craziness for once.
Even if it's just to make this night a little less unbearable.
"All right."
Karen took a deep breath, took off her high heels, and stepped barefoot onto the floor.
She clapped her hands: "Since the boss has spoken, we'll do as he says."
She turned to the intern who was still in a daze.
"Ben! Don't just stand there like a log! Go get all the spare laptops from the storage room! Bring them all over, as long as they can turn on!"
"And order us pizza! I want the largest Italian sausage pizza, five, no, ten!"
"Coffee! I want the biggest cup of black coffee. We need caffeine, lots of caffeine!"
"We're not sleeping tonight!"
As Karen gave the command, the previously frozen air instantly began to flow.
Despair was replaced by busyness, and the entire campaign headquarters was once again in a frenzy.
Frank returned quickly.
He was carrying two huge cardboard boxes, inside which were thread-bound notebooks with worn covers and yellowed pages.
That's the membership roster of the Pittsburgh Steelworkers over the past thirty years.
Each page was densely covered with names, addresses, and phone numbers.
Some of the writing was blurred, and some of the paper was stained with oil and coffee.
But every name recorded here represents a steelworker who once sweated and bled for this city.
Sarah's printer was also working like crazy.
Thousands of pages of Excel spreadsheets were printed out, containing the interaction records of 50,000 subscribers to "The Heart of Pittsburgh".
Margaret also came, bringing several thick community event sign-in books.
A dozen or so young volunteers sat around the huge conference table.
They were surrounded by piles of papers.
A tense yet intense atmosphere of battle permeated the air.
Name: John Smith. Address: 402 Liberty Avenue. Occupation: Retired welder. Notes: Frank's old coworker and supporter of steel bars.
"Name: Emily Chen. Address: 15 Pine Street. Note: Donor to 'Heart of Pittsburgh,' who left a message saying she wanted to improve community education."
One by one, the data was extracted manually and entered into that newly built, rudimentary database.
Leo also joined the recording team.
As he looked at those names, he seemed to see vivid, real faces.
Databases can be cut off, but people are alive.
However, reality remains harsh.
Despite their best efforts, the speed of manual data entry was still far from meeting the needs of the campaign.
Several hours passed, and they had only managed to compile information on fewer than two thousand valid voters.
Pittsburgh has over 100,000 voters.
At this rate, they might only have finished compiling voter data by primary election day, and even that data wouldn't be complete.
This kind of manual labor can only provide temporary relief and cannot fundamentally reverse the disadvantage.
Ethan Hawke walked over to Leo and reached out to stop Leo's hand from typing on the keyboard.
"Leo, stop for a second."
"This spirit is very touching, really. I admire you for coming up with such a method."
"But that doesn't solve the fundamental problem."
"Cartwright was firing heavy machine guns, and we're now fighting back with stones."
"We can't rely on this stupid method."
Leo looked up at the elite advisor from Washington.
"What else can we do? They've already taken control of the local party headquarters."
"Leo, there are some things you need to understand," Ethan said calmly. "In the political landscape of this country, there isn't just one path to the end."
"The VAN system is the official lifeline of the Democratic Party, and its access control has a strict hierarchy."
"At the bottom are local committees like Pittsburgh, then the Pennsylvania committee, and at the very top is the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C."
"In this official bureaucratic system, Cartwright really used the rules to choke you."
"However, in the past two presidential elections, in order to counter the suppression by the establishment, we progressives have already secretly established a 'shadow data system' that is completely independent of the official system of the Democratic National Committee."
Ethan's meaning was clear: they could use this "shadow data system".
Faced with this sudden turn of events, Leo did not immediately show excitement.
He squinted, scrutinizing Ethan before him.
"Ethan, you just spoke with Senator Sanders on the phone?"
Ethan shook his head: "No, I haven't communicated with the senator."
"My only mission is to help you through this difficult time," Ethan explained calmly. "When I left Washington, the senator gave me full authority. When such a potentially fatal administrative obstacle arises, I have the power to use the necessary resources to put it out."
Leo looked at Ethan.
He didn't entirely believe Ethan's words.
"Mr. President, do you believe it?" Leo asked in his mind.
Roosevelt's voice rang out, tinged with a hint of pleasure.
"Excellent, Leo."
"The look in your eyes now, the skeptical attitude, shows that you are finally starting to grow up."
"You're no longer that naive kid who believes whatever others give you. You've started to think like a real politician and examine the motives behind each ally."
"That's good. Staying vigilant is a skill that will allow you to survive in the jungle."
Roosevelt paused for a moment and began to help Leo break down the situation.
"Whether Ethan lied or not is actually not important."
"If he lied, it means that Washington is watching this place very closely, and they are eager to keep you as their bargaining chip."
"If he didn't lie, it shows that Sanders trusted him immensely, and it also shows that they had anticipated this situation and had prepared contingency plans."
"In either case, the result is the same: you need this data system to save your life, and Ethan has brought it to you."
"A hungry person shouldn't check if the baker's fingernails are clean; he should eat his fill first."
"Accept it, Leo. As for Ethan's true intentions, there will be plenty of time to find out later."
Leo withdrew his scrutinizing gaze.
His doubts hadn't disappeared; he had simply suppressed them for the time being.
"Okay." Leo looked at Ethan and nodded. "Since the tool is right here, let's use it."
Ethan took out his phone, dialed a number, pressed the speakerphone button, and placed the phone in the center of the table.
The phone rang three times before being answered.
"Ethan?" A deep, husky middle-aged voice came from the other end of the phone. "Calling so late, has something happened in Pittsburgh?"