From a mailing list, on David Cobb's testimony before Conyers today...

[punpirate]

... which is most interesting:

======================================================================

From xxxx@xxxxxxx:

David Cobb's testimony before Conyers today.

Here is a very rough transcript of what David Cobb reported at the Conyers hearing today: There were alot of dropouts on the audio, so some was garbled, so it's not a completely exact transcript, but darn close.

************************************

Rep Conyers, I have the most recent, breaking information, it will be brief but I think very important.

It's probably the most ? incident that has been related to my campaign, it was related only on Sunday, Dec 12th, regarding a very shockig event that occurred last Friday, Dec 10th. The person who is reporting it, at this point, wishes to remain anonymous but I will bring it to this committee because this must be investigated

A representative from Triad Systems came into this county's BOE offices unannounced on this Friday. He said he was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the upcoming recount. He then headed into the back room where the Triad ?? that is, the machine that COUNTS the ballots, is kept.

The Triad representative then told them that there was a problem with the system, that the system had a bad batttery and had quote "lost all it's data" endquote

He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out of it and in another spare ??? (tower PC?) in the room

(garbled -- something about having spare parts in his coat?)

...he finally reassembled everything and said that it was working, but that not to turn it off.

He then asked which precincts would be counted in the 3% reount test, and the ones which had been selected, as if it had the right number of votes, was relayed to him, and he did something else to the tabulator.

The Triad Systems representative suggested that if the hand recount had to match the machine count exactly, and since it would be hard to memorize the several numbers that would be need to get the count to come out exactly right, that they should post this series of numbers on the wall where they would not be noticed by observers, such that to make them look like employee information or something similar. The people doing the hand count could then, he said, (garbled -- record? those numbers?) no matter what they actually counted in the ballots.

This would then quote "match" endquote the tabulator report for this precinct exactly.

Conyers then replied: "David Cobb I need you to arrange a meeting with our staff immediately as soon as possible so we can go into detail on this matter"
======================================================================

Don't exactly know what to make of this, but a good technician could make a battery change and, if necessary, a BIOS chip replacement without losing any of the data stored on the drives. The question not asked here is: why weren't backups done before this technician touched the official county server?

Not sure what county is being talked about here, either. Maybe Franklin or Warren?

[pleiku52cab]

1. Just the corrupt cabal playing CYA n/t

[LynzM]

2. Holy crap.

If that is for real, somebody needs to figure out exactly what is going on there!!

[libertypirate]

3. Are they "setting" which precincts to return "correct" counts?

Is that why Blackwell determined the list of precincts to hand recount?

[Stephanie]

4. LOL! That transcript has gone full circle

It was posted here by dotcosm about an hour ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=149814&mesg_id=149814

[punpirate]

6. Oops! Thought it was new....

Thanks for the tip.... :)

[Stephanie]

7. Only because dotcosm transcribed it her/himself

He/she did the rough transcript - now it has already gone out in email and come back to us like a boomerang! :hi:

[Duer 157099]

8. LOL, that was very cool

boomerang indeed! :-)

[mrdmk]

5. A CMOS battery will not bring down a system

A computer going back to A/T systems (the 80286 chip) will not lose any information off of the hard drive (secondary memory), of course the Read/Write memory (RAM, the primary memory) will in most cases. I say most cases because I have a laptop with NV Memory in the primary memory or Non Volatile Memory in case of losing power for any reason. With a dead battery in the CMOS a series of steps the computer will take to reacquire the necessary information to run. This will result into a longer boot-up to identify all components within the machine and a manual entry of date and time. Then the computer will boot the O/S from the hard drive and all should be normal even with a dead CMOS battery. That is the long of the story.

The short of the story is bullshit!

[genieroze]

9. That's Bullcrap!!!!!!

"The Triad representative then told them that there was a problem with the system, that the system had a bad CMOS battery and had quote "lost all it's data" endquote"
The battery had nothing to do with the HD!!!!!!! Even if a HD goes bad you can recover data, give me a break.
IM A TECH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have had bad CMOS batteries, I have had bad motherboards, bad ram, data is kept on the HD. LIE, LIE, LIE

[GetTheRightVote]

10. I am really scared now, what the hell were they doing letting him do that?

This smells all up to heaven, the fix is in now and they did it while they were standing there, Help someone !!!

[genieroze]

11. My husbands an IT professional

for the military, and he said what a crock. I say these people are evil ruthless scumbags, who are worth less then what's on the bottom of my shoe after I step in dog poop.

[ClintCooper2003]

12. I bet that guy wasn't even a Triad employee, but a "ghost"

employee who knows the system inside and out.

[Stephanie]

14. Is this the episode that they got on tape?

I think in the hearing there was testimony about something that they had witnesses and tape of - is this it? That would be so hilarious if they got the tech on tape telling an outright lie.

[sunnystarr]

13. Don't you wonder how many other county's BOE's had a

vistor from Triad? Is this being done to all the equipment? Why only that county? Unless that machine tabulated for the whole state.

[bush_is_wacko]

15. If this is true...

It sounds like there should be evidence EVERYWHERE of screwups. What the hell are our LEADERS, and I use that term very losely, going to do about this? Why aren't they screaming from the rooftops? This country isn't even close to the country people used to think is worth fighting and dying for!