UPDATE On Ohio Vote in regards to Triad

[ChicanoPwr]

Video Supporting Ohio Vote Fraud Claim Revealed
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report

Truthout has come into possession of video from Hocking County, Ohio. The video was recorded by a documentary film crew that was reporting on the Ohio election. The crew interviewed a technician from Triad Systems. In a report released by truthout on 15 December, we reported on an affidavit filed by Sherole Eaton, Hocking County deputy director of elections. In her affidavit, Eaton stated:

On Friday, December 10 2004, Michael from TriAd called in the AM to inform us that he would be in our office in the PM on the same day. I asked him why he was visiting us. He said, "to check out your tabulator, computer, and that the attorneys will be asking some tricky questions and he wanted to go over some of the questions they maybe ask." He also added that there would be no charge for this service.

He arrived at about 12:30PM. I hung his coat up and it was very heavy. I made a comment about it being so heavy. He, Lisa Schwartze and I chatted for a few minutes. He proceeded to go to the room where our computer and tabulation machine is kept. I followed him into the room. I had my back to him when he turned the computer on. He stated that the computer was not coming up. I did see some commands at the lower left hand of the screen but no menu. He said that the battery in the computer was dead and that the stored information was gone. He said that he could put a patch on it and fix it. My main concern was - what if this happened when we were ready to do the recount. He proceeded to take the computer apart and call his offices to get information to input into our computer. Our computer is fourteen years old and as far as I know had always worked in the past. I asked him if the older computer, that is in the same room. could be used for the recount. I don't remember exactly what he said but I did relay to him that the computer was old and a spare. At some point he asked if he could take the spare computer apart and I said "yes". He took both computers apart. I don't remember seeing any tools and he asked Sue Wallace, Clerk, for a screwdriver. She got it for him. At this point I was frustrated about the computer not performing and feared that it wouldn't work for the recount. I called Gerald Robinette, board chairman, to inform him regarding the computer problem and asked him if we could have Tri Ad come to our offices to run the program and tabulator for the recount. Gerald talked on the phone with Michael and Michael assured Gerald that he could fix our computer. He worked on the computer until about 3:00 PM and then asked me which precinct and the number of the precinct we were going to count. I told him, Good Hope 1 # 17. He went back into the tabulation room. Shortly after that he (illegible) stated that the computer was ready for the recount and told us not to turn the computer off so it would charge up.

Before Lisa ran the tests, Michael said to turn the computer off. Lisa said, " I thought you said we weren't supposed to turn it off." He said turn it off and right back on and it should come up. It did come up and Lisa ran the tests. Michael gave us instructions on how to explain the rotarien, what the tests mean, etc. No advice on how to handle the attorneys but to have our Prosecuting Attorney at the recount to answer any of their legal questions. He said not to turn the computer off until after the recount.

<snip>

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/122404X.shtml

[understandinglife]

1. And, here's the link to Congressman Conyers 23 Dec 2004 letter to Triad

http://rawstory.rawprint.com/1204/conyers_triadnew_122304.php

And link to current discussion at DU:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=190879&mesg_id=191289&page=

Peace.

[understandinglife]

2. One other related DU link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=190848&mesg_id=190848

For research purposes, just trying to keep all these independent (and important) threads linked to whatever extent possible.

Peace.

[progressoid]

22. Thanks, I was looking for that..............nt

[impeachthescoundrel]

3. Wonderful letter

But the answers to the questions Conyers asked will have to be forced out of them!

[idealista]

4. what is in the video, why would the guy say anything to film crew?

[brindis_desala]

7. because he doesn't realize that what he's done is illegal

[roseBudd]

5. Notice how he said he doesn't do any programming?

I bet Triad runs a 1 programmer shop and it's blood (just like Tony Soprano and nephew Christopher) because blood doesn't rat.

[leftchick]

6. exactly rosebud!

like the Urosevich Bros.! God save us from the Election Company Mafia!

http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3667&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

[roseBudd]

8. except the programmer is a daughter who married a taxidermist named John

Cheryl Bellucci

[caligirl]

9. Why would he say"He said not to turn the computer off until after the

recount"? Would some instruction be deactivated?

[DrDebug]

10. I'll bet that he doesn't know the answer himself

He's just saying what he has been instructed to say...

[ChicanoPwr]

11. Yes it would

Since the underlining program is MS Access. Basiclly, if you shut down the program, whatever information is there stays there you can not undo. You have to find a true find special software to recover. I work with Access. I had this happen to me, the network screwed up, and I lost a day's worth of data.

[caligirl]

12. Thanks n/t

[many a good man]

13. Instructions in volatile memory?

Normally program code is written to the hard disk, or permanent memory. Writing it into RAM, or volatile memory, means the changes to the code will just disappear when the machine is powered down. Its like creating a Word document and working in it for a while, but not saving it before turning off your computer. You could see your document while you were working on it (working in RAM) but its completely lost if you don't save it.

[ChicanoPwr]

18. Not really

MS Word has that auto recover, so just in case power went out.

[many a good man]

19. Hackers use Auto-Save?

If your purpose is to NOT be detected then you wouldn't go thru the bother of coding automatic saves.

[ChicanoPwr]

23. Interesting, so

I wonder if they forgot to take off the auto save. That a look at this question Cheryl asked.

I have the need to know how many bytes are in a directory. This directory may include several subdirectories. Right now, I use ADIR() to traverse the different directories, adding the bytes in the files as I find them. This works, but as the directory includes more and more directories, it is taking noticeable time to determine the number of bytes.

Is there a system call or API call that I can use to get the number of bytes from the upper level directory?

Many thanks!
Cheryl A Bellucci
TRIAD GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEMS, INC

[Doctor O]

21. Sorry but Autorecover is not in RAM, or ROM. It is saved to

a hidden directory in windows. When word starts up again then it goes to the file (which is setup as a default and can be changed by the user) and recovers that document.

[many a good man]

26. We're not talking about Word here

I just gave that as an example. Auto-save is a feature, an extra. Its not inherent in Windows programming. MS had to write extra code for Word to read data from memory every few minutes to write the memory buffers to disk. Most programs do not have "auto-save", meaning you have to click on a button or some other way execute a command to write it to disk.

Its very easy to write software that resides totally in memory. If the program is small enough to fit into memory, you can download the entire program from a server and run it in memory. Software for these tabulators are written in a language at least one or two generations old and they probably require very little space compared to programs being written nowadays.

To avoid detection, you would definitely want to run the program in memory to avoid being caught. Therefore you would disable auto-save functionality. That way evidence disappears when the machine is rebooted.

The question I have: was this technician trying to rig the tabulator or "un-rig" it for the recount?

[mulethree]

14. What makes you think its MS Access?

These programs were written 15 - 20 years ago.

Why would you pay a MS-Access license for every machine if all you need to do is read a simple ballot definition and then keep track of 50 counters?

[ChicanoPwr]

17. Because of this right here.

I have a VFP6 application that reads/updates a series of Access MDBs through Remote Views stored in DBCs. I know I can sort the Views through DBC set up, but my question is: Even if the view is sorted on a field, and I know the value of the field I want... How can I get to that record quickly?

For example: One table is sorted on transaction id (TranID). I know the TranID of the record I want. I can't use SEEK... how do I get to the one record (out of 100,000 or more) quickly? Currently I am using LOCATEs, but is there a better way?

Thanks!
Cheryl A Bellucci
TRIAD GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEMS, INC

http://www.foxite.com/archives/0000039405.htm

and look at this one.

http://www.foxite.com/archives/search.aspx?q=Cheryl+Bellucci

And take a look at this. Tell me if this company looks like it have been in business for over 20 years with a revenue of over $4 mill dollars
http://www.xegc.org/spotlight/triad.htm

[mulethree]

20. try reading it

Someone in their office is using foxpro6 and access with remote databases. Not very applicable to a 14 year old stand-alone machine. Machine couldn't run that software and it would be overkill for the job of reading holes in a card and counting them.

More likely its for their voter info system which has actual use for database software.

[ChicanoPwr]

25. I would agree, but

How would you explain Diebold, aren't they using Access.

[many a good man]

27. Triad is much older

Lets not confuse the vendors and their platforms. The software in question here is for the tabulator, not for the voting machine itself. Diebold makes the touch-screen machines and they use MS Access on the back end. Triad makes the tablulators used to count paper punch card and/or optical scan ballots. These machines are about 15 years old. They are likely using some kind of DOS-based flat file or ISAM database back end.

[Clark2008]

24. I just posted this on another thread

I also work with Access and my company has several offices. I often access the other offices networks via VPN and make updates.

I never have the problem to which she is referencing since I isolate using filter selections, but it is interesting that she would need help seeking one TranID out of 100,000 files.

[mulethree]

15. The same reason he says reboot it but turn it right back on

The battery that was changed, needs to charge. If you turn the machine off and right back on, then the battery charge level is sufficient, but to leave it off for days or hours, it needs to charge up first.

They did reboot the machine before they ran their test decks. These concerns here that he put something into a non-volatile memory that he didn't want erased, don't seem to take into consideration the reboot.

Of course if you want to be sneaky, then you put it into non-volatile memory. Check the IRQ setting of serial port #2, if S2IRQ = x then normal else cheat. Or a setting in their program that's disguised to be something boring.

[GetTheRightVote]

16. That is promising, don't turn off the machine or the data is lost ....

what happens if the power goes out on the machine then, hello..

:grr:

[dlaliberte]

28. Maybe leave machine on for remote access

I had the same question you did. If the power was cycled, which could happen for a variety of reasons, then anything in volatile memory would be lost. But if they are hacking in remotely, the machine must remain on also.