Change has come to America – sketchy computer glitches no longer decide our presidential elections, perhaps because the McCain campaigned lost the services of Karl Rove’s vote-flipping wizard Mike Connell.

Connell’s role in stealing the 2004 election, namely in Ohio, remains under investigation. A Republican computer expert has explained the problem. You don’t need  a paper trail to audit a computer voting system, but Diebold will not release its computer architecture, which appears designed to steal votes, because it does not want to reveal “trade secrets.”

Problems with Florida voting machines are coming to light – which will usually doesn’t happen right away. Signs of trouble tend to emerge during the month following an election, as results are analyzed. Just because the Democrats won where they were supposed to does not mean votes were counted properly.

Private companies that provide equipment for the fundamental public process in a democracy shouldn’t have trade secrets. I’m not saying the government should nationalize voting-machine factories, but the mechanisms of the vote-counting machines that failed to count 50,000 votes in Manatee County this election, and the computer architecture that appears designed to change vote totals in Ohio should be opened to public scrutiny.