I would say that the key point of difference in our ideologies/worldviews (I don't buy your distinction) is that I think it is important and valid to act in the political arena in my interests and you evidently don't want to go there. I would remind you that the corporations in this industry had no such compunctions when they first proposed H1B - regardless of whether or not H1B was justified.
I haven't read any books recently about corporate execs. There was a time in my past when I read books about labor history, which puts a little different spin on the characters of some of these guys - but let's not even go there. I'll assume, for the sake of argument, that you're right about their charisma and values.
My point is it doesn't matter if you're the Antaean Rockefeller, Carnegie, Jobs - or Kennyboy Lay. Until his ponzi scheme collapsed, Lay rode just as high as these guys. And Wall Street didn't care that he was a crook. Or what about "Neutron Jack" Welch of GE? What were his accomplishments other than to keep his stock price high by ruthless outsourcing? And yet everyone fawned over his "charisma". I suppose there really are lots of people in the world who could have equalled those "accomplishments". And I'll bet even the Rockefellers did not earn salaries at the same multiplier to the average worker's salary as these guys. You want to be a master of the universe, there are some obligations this places on you.
Have you ever read "Yertle the Turtle"? I commend it to you, highly. I know of no better takedown of the cult of the CEO.
Do I complain when electronics are imported to tranparently drive down prices? I suppose not, but I don't rush to shop at Walmart either. I don't look down on grocery clerks or begrudge them their union scale jobs just so I can have my food a little cheaper as some geeks do. If computers were more expensive, maybe I couldn't afford more than one. Wouldn't be the end of my world.
I recognize that whether or not this group or that group suffers from high unemployment can affect my well-being as well. And having high-perfoming stocks in my 401K will be faint consolation to me if I'm unable to contribute at my profession - until I'm ready to retire.
Somewhere in between Soviet planning and the current rush to enshrine the market as the only element of democracy worth saving lies the "plan" I was talking about. The Indian push for high tech is more than just the market at work. It is a plan, not in the Soviet all-encompassing sense, but a plan nonetheless, for where they want to take their country. I ask again, where's our plan? And if we Americans don't like it, we have the right to ask that it be changed.
I say ideology, you say worldview. To me there's no difference between these two terms. My ideology says that as a citizen of a democratic country I have important rights to seek redress of grievances for things done to me unfairly. Your worldview tells you to eschew all that and face the future with optimism and you'll be all right. I say it's great to be optimistic, but why be optimistic if reality says otherwise.
I have read the Wired article and agree that it tells both sides of the story. I have also worked with Indian programmers many times. The team leader of my current team is Indian, and he's one of the nicest and most talented developers I've had the pleasure of knowing. He came to this country in 1992. He lost his last job when the development team he headed was outsourced to India and the company subsequently bought by the Indian company that provided the outsourced labor. He thinks we're crazy to let all these jobs go so easily. I've worked with other Indians who were better and worse than American developers I've worked with. I worked with one who was a total fraud. He was hired as a programming whiz at top dollar and fired when he started asking questions like "how do you install java"?
I believe Indian programmers run the gamut of skill levels and are basically on a par with American programmers. That's irrelevant to the point at hand. I'm sure there are many Indians (not to mention Americans) who could do the work of corporate execs for far less money than American corporate execs, but nobody's putting their jobs at risk! Why not?
I disagree that capital and labor mobility are the norm in this country. What do you suppose would happen if, lets say, large numbers of Chinese were brought to Detroit to work the auto plants at sub-prevailing wages? Immigration has been an important part of American life but it is often restricted when it's seen as a transparent attempt to drive down wages.
Having just been laid off, I have to cackle at your statement that the wages American programmers want exceed the demand for their labor. All too often, they take one look at your resume or grey hair and simply assume you're too expensive without even asking. When employers are in that good a position vis a vis employees, something's out of whack. And H1B/L1 have put them in that position.
Finally, I must ask you, what future do you see for the United States? Do you really think that America can survive as the "idea generator" for the world? Doesn't sound right to me. That's not the whole story of how this country achieved its greatness. It is part of the story. But that greatness was also paid for with solid effort and dogged persistence. Edison's "98% perspiration" if you will. The "greatest generation's" army was an army of guys who knew how to fix things. My son can't tell the difference between sitting in a car with the motor running or not running. He can play a mean video game though. Where are we headed?
India made a conscious decision and plan to go after computer programming jobs. What's America's plan? Sue everyone for violating our intellectual property? (and by the way, have you noticed that Indian farmers are up in arms over Monsanto somehow getting a patent on the wheat seeds they've been growing for centuries?)
Your "optimistic worldview" doesn't sound like much of a plan to me.
You're assuming that unrestricted immigration, even when it is transparently intended to shove down wages, is the norm. It is not.
The measure of whether there is a labor shortage or not is the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is our profession is currently about 9%, which is well above the national average. There is no shortage of labor in our field. There is a shortage of cheap labor, which is what this is all about.
Are indentured servant immigrant programmers better off here than if they stayed home? I suppose so, or they wouldn't come. But you're the one advocating for "free markets". If an immigrant programmer sees a better opportunity than the one he's indentured to, why shouldn't he have the right to go for it, if free markets are the be-all and end-all? The fact that they are not is more proof that this is in part a wage-suppression scheme. And if you insist on putting quotes around "indentured servant", I suggest you read some recent testimony before Congress on the subject by someone who worked for one of these firms.
And I'm not in any doldrums, thanks so much for your concern. I found a gig. I'll probably find another. But damnit, I put in my time. I've earned those weeks of vacation I won't be getting.
I looked at your "personal productivity" pages. Sorry, I don't need lectures on entrepreneurialism. I don't want to spend large segments of my time selling myself or a product. That's not what I do best. I'll do it if I have to, but I consider that a separate skill from programming, and one that I find an annoying distraction.
I'm talking about facing the reality that there no longer is a labor shortage in the American high-tech industry and that a cutting back the number of H1B and L1 visas issued is indicated. The justification for these was, originally, a labor shortage.
And while we're on the topic of free markets, if we are going to allow H1B and L1 visaholders in to take these jobs, how about doing something to protect THEM against the kinds of indentured-servant conditions that many of them are forced to labor under, which depress wages even further?
Don't call me obsolete! I can program the crap out of many thirty-year-olds who are still gainfully employed, as any employer who gets beyond his stereotype of what a fifty-year-old programmer is like, will find out. But this free and easy access to third-world-wage programmers means they don't have to confront their stereotypes. They don't have to take risks on hiring someone of my age. they don't have to expend the necessary effort to find the good talent. They're the ones who are being coddled, not me!
Isn't it ironic that at the same time that baby-boomer retirement and its effects on the budget are serious political and economic concerns, baby-boomer programmers are being pushed out the door in droves?
OK, you're just as opposed as the next guy to corporate welfare, but that corporate welfare happened. By accepting that welfare, the high tech corporations accepted an obligation to the taxpayers who gave it to them. Now they disregard that obligation and lecture us about free trade.
You free trade absolutists sound to me approximately the same as Soviet commisars. "Comrades, you may be dying in these awful coal mines, but remember, we're suffering so that your grandchidren will experience the perfect society, Communism, which will be heaven on earth. So stop whining and keep digging that coal!"
From the free trade absolutist we hear, "People, protectionism never works. Free trade always does. So never mind that in your lifetime we pull two or three careers away from you and move them to lower wage countries, you guys should just 'move up the value chain' and learn the skills that will make you competitive. So stop whining and get yourself a new career."
I was a machinist once. That job moved to Mexico and the field didn't look promising. But I'd been messing with computers so I made a career switch at 35. I forced myself to learn programming. Would I have done so had I known I would be virtually unemployable at 50? I doubt it. But I didn't know that, so I learned C, C++, java, relational databases, oop, uml. And damnit, I'm good, as anyone who's ever worked with me would tell you. But now I hear one of two things at almost all jobs I'm lucky enough to interview for
we want someone who knows skill X like the back of his hand. (Never mind that I could learn it in about 2 days).
you're overqualified for this position.
About all I can find are low-wage consulting gigs that offer no health insurance. And these damned economists sit up there and have the nerve to tell me that I'm not seeing the whole picture. As if they are! They don't see me or anyone like me. They're nothing but whores for the corporations who pay them.
Now I suppose you might say I should go back to college and study nano-technology, but what's the point? Even a young guy making that his career would have to expect that once the technology was perfected, his job too would be farmed out.
The reason this is happening is in part because we allowed high tech, the golden goose of jobs, to write its own ticket and hyperaccelerate a process that should have taken three or four decades into less than decade.
The only way you can succeed at high tech is to make your millions in the first ten years. If you haven't by then you'll be judged over the hill. To me that's fundamentally inhuman, and that's exactly what's wrong with your free market absolutism.
High tech corporations were showered with all kinds of benefits, tax breaks, etc., largely because they were viewed as an engine of job creation. No taxes on e-commerce. Gotta grow those high-tech industries. Your tax dollars and mine built the Internet. We then gave it to the corporations, and now, all of a sudden, it's all theirs, and the hell with your jobs, we'll move 'em anywhere we damn please, thank you very much.
Luskin himself on the responsibility of board moderators for content expressed therein:
http://www.thestreet.com/comment/openbook/106095 8. html
August 30, 2000 - The worst solution to the problem of manipulation on discussion boards is to shift the responsibility for enforcement from the regulators to the board sponsors. The host of an online discussion board is no more in a position to monitor and assure the quality of every posted message than a "common carrier" such as AT&T is to monitor every utterance made over its telephone network.
>>I don't agree, however, that communism would ever work on a large scale. I base this on human nature alone though.
True enough.
However, what's usually overlooked is the other side of this coin. Free market absolutism is every bit as antithetical to human nature as communism is.
Set up communism and black markets will emerge. People will inevitably try to get around regulations no matter how benevolent their purpose may seem or even be.
Set up an absolute free market and people will revolt against the assumption that they must willingly give up their jobs and their lives just because someone halfway round the world can be forced to do the same thing cheaper.
It doesn't help, either, that some of the loudest voices for free market absolutism are in reality only too glad to let governments intercede for them whenever they get control of the government.
A market with regulation is the way to go. How much regulation is the stuff of politics. But the absolutists are wrong.
Before we go around creating new systems for voting, we need to understand the old systems, their strengths and weakesses. It's not as easy as we may think and we need a little humility.
As with any project, you need to know the requirements. Here is a partial list of requirements, all of which are met to a high degree by the present systems like punchcard, optically scanned paper and even lever voting machines. These technologies arose in response to various historical attempts to cheat. You should not even think of "starting from scratch" if you don't have solutions to these requirements.
Secret ballot. Nobody but the voter must know who he voted for.
Integrity of the ballot. Nobody, not even the voter, should be allowed to remove from the polling place an official copy of his vote, to prevent vote sales. Nobody, not even the voter should be allowed to remove from the polling place, a blank ballot, to prevent vote sales by chain voting.
Audit trail. The count needs to be verifiable and challengeable.
Fair. There should no partial counts available to some parties and not others, no communication between the system running the voting and the polling place while polling is going on. For a reported example of this, see this article, linked to by Garfinkel.
Many of the "solutions" I've seen bandied about here fail to meet one or more of these requirements.
Having said that, there are, of course, problems with the present systems. One new one is the advent of inexpensive digital cameras which offer the possibility of voters' copying their votes to participate in vote-buying schemes against systems such as optically-scanned paper ballots which were previously secure against this. Solutions will have to be found for this.
Perhaps it will have to be made illegal to bring a camera into a voting booth.
But the keys to democracy should not be sold cheaply. Some of those who so glibly propose these schemes sound like nothing so much as wannabe Bill Gateses.
Both you and the person you replied to have the question of proof wrong:
Corrupt people would LOVE a situation where you could buy someone like this and they (but not anyone else) would have a way to prove that you delivered on your promise to vote as paid for.
The scenario you outline (current situation) helps to prevent massive vote buying. The "print the ballot after you vote on a touchscreen" scenario would enable massive vote buying as would any system that did not prevent "chain voting".
The requirement is this:
No one but the voter should be able to know how the voter voted. (secret ballot)
The important corollary is this:
No one (not even the voter) should be able to remove from the polling place any ballot materials, be it a filled in ballot or a blank ballot. Every blank ballot distributed should be accounted for.
Very good, AC! When messing with the internal workings of democracy it behooves technologists making proposed solutions to have some humility, for Chrissakes.
Do not even think of proposing a solution until you understand the problem - which includes the understanding the reasons why what currently exists has come to be.
It is good to see the emphasis on the chain-voting problem. Three years ago I would argue with fellow geeks ripping "solutions" to the Florida mess off the top of their heads onto napkins, imagining "fixes" of all sorts without knowing the history, the "requirements" of secrecy, fraud-prevention, etc.
More disturbingly, in the chaos after Florida, some were not just scribbling on napkins for the geek fun of it. They saw a business opportunity and sold all sorts of high-tech flim-flammery to bedazzled election officials.
You can't offer a solution without knowing the requirements! And the keys to democracy must not be sold so easily. Back off, geek, and come back when you can show that you understand the entire issue.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say that the key point of difference in our ideologies/worldviews (I don't buy your distinction) is that I think it is important and valid to act in the political arena in my interests and you evidently don't want to go there. I would remind you that the corporations in this industry had no such compunctions when they first proposed H1B - regardless of whether or not H1B was justified.
I haven't read any books recently about corporate execs. There was a time in my past when I read books about labor history, which puts a little different spin on the characters of some of these guys - but let's not even go there. I'll assume, for the sake of argument, that you're right about their charisma and values.
My point is it doesn't matter if you're the Antaean Rockefeller, Carnegie, Jobs - or Kennyboy Lay. Until his ponzi scheme collapsed, Lay rode just as high as these guys. And Wall Street didn't care that he was a crook. Or what about "Neutron Jack" Welch of GE? What were his accomplishments other than to keep his stock price high by ruthless outsourcing? And yet everyone fawned over his "charisma". I suppose there really are lots of people in the world who could have equalled those "accomplishments". And I'll bet even the Rockefellers did not earn salaries at the same multiplier to the average worker's salary as these guys. You want to be a master of the universe, there are some obligations this places on you.
Have you ever read "Yertle the Turtle"? I commend it to you, highly. I know of no better takedown of the cult of the CEO.
Do I complain when electronics are imported to tranparently drive down prices? I suppose not, but I don't rush to shop at Walmart either. I don't look down on grocery clerks or begrudge them their union scale jobs just so I can have my food a little cheaper as some geeks do.
If computers were more expensive, maybe I couldn't afford more than one. Wouldn't be the end of my world.
I recognize that whether or not this group or that group suffers from high unemployment can affect my well-being as well. And having high-perfoming stocks in my 401K will be faint consolation to me if I'm unable to contribute at my profession - until I'm ready to retire.
Somewhere in between Soviet planning and the current rush to enshrine the market as the only element of democracy worth saving lies the "plan" I was talking about. The Indian push for high tech is more than just the market at work. It is a plan, not in the Soviet all-encompassing sense, but a plan nonetheless, for where they want to take their country. I ask again, where's our plan? And if we Americans don't like it, we have the right to ask that it be changed.
I say ideology, you say worldview. To me there's no difference between these two terms. My ideology says that as a citizen of a democratic country I have important rights to seek redress of grievances for things done to me unfairly. Your worldview tells you to eschew all that and face the future with optimism and you'll be all right. I say it's great to be optimistic, but why be optimistic if reality says otherwise.
I have read the Wired article and agree that it tells both sides of the story. I have also worked with Indian programmers many times. The team leader of my current team is Indian, and he's one of the nicest and most talented developers I've had the pleasure of knowing. He came to this country in 1992. He lost his last job when the development team he headed was outsourced to India and the company subsequently bought by the Indian company that provided the outsourced labor. He thinks we're crazy to let all these jobs go so easily. I've worked with other Indians who were better and worse than American developers I've worked with. I worked with one who was a total fraud. He was hired as a programming whiz at top dollar and fired when he started asking questions like "how do you install java"?
I believe Indian programmers run the gamut of skill levels and are basically on a par with American programmers. That's irrelevant to the point at hand. I'm sure there are many Indians (not to mention Americans) who could do the work of corporate execs for far less money than American corporate execs, but nobody's putting their jobs at risk! Why not?
I disagree that capital and labor mobility are the norm in this country. What do you suppose would happen if, lets say, large numbers of Chinese were brought to Detroit to work the auto plants at sub-prevailing wages? Immigration has been an important part of American life but it is often restricted when it's seen as a transparent attempt to drive down wages.
Having just been laid off, I have to cackle at your statement that the wages American programmers want exceed the demand for their labor. All too often, they take one look at your resume or grey hair and simply assume you're too expensive without even asking. When employers are in that good a position vis a vis employees, something's out of whack. And H1B/L1 have put them in that position.
Finally, I must ask you, what future do you see for the United States? Do you really think that America can survive as the "idea generator" for the world? Doesn't sound right to me. That's not the whole story of how this country achieved its greatness. It is part of the story. But that greatness was also paid for with solid effort and dogged persistence. Edison's "98% perspiration" if you will. The "greatest generation's" army was an army of guys who knew how to fix things. My son can't tell the difference between sitting in a car with the motor running or not running. He can play a mean video game though. Where are we headed?
India made a conscious decision and plan to go after computer programming jobs. What's America's plan? Sue everyone for violating our intellectual property? (and by the way, have you noticed that Indian farmers are up in arms over Monsanto somehow getting a patent on the wheat seeds they've been growing for centuries?)
Your "optimistic worldview" doesn't sound like much of a plan to me.
The measure of whether there is a labor shortage or not is the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is our profession is currently about 9%, which is well above the national average. There is no shortage of labor in our field. There is a shortage of cheap labor, which is what this is all about.
Are indentured servant immigrant programmers better off here than if they stayed home? I suppose so, or they wouldn't come. But you're the one advocating for "free markets". If an immigrant programmer sees a better opportunity than the one he's indentured to, why shouldn't he have the right to go for it, if free markets are the be-all and end-all? The fact that they are not is more proof that this is in part a wage-suppression scheme. And if you insist on putting quotes around "indentured servant", I suggest you read some recent testimony before Congress on the subject by someone who worked for one of these firms.
And I'm not in any doldrums, thanks so much for your concern. I found a gig. I'll probably find another. But damnit, I put in my time. I've earned those weeks of vacation I won't be getting.
I looked at your "personal productivity" pages. Sorry, I don't need lectures on entrepreneurialism. I don't want to spend large segments of my time selling myself or a product. That's not what I do best. I'll do it if I have to, but I consider that a separate skill from programming, and one that I find an annoying distraction.
Who's talking about protectionism?
I'm talking about facing the reality that there no longer is a labor shortage in the American high-tech industry and that a cutting back the number of H1B and L1 visas issued is indicated. The justification for these was, originally, a labor shortage.
And while we're on the topic of free markets, if we are going to allow H1B and L1 visaholders in to take these jobs, how about doing something to protect THEM against the kinds of indentured-servant conditions that many of them are forced to labor under, which depress wages even further?
Don't call me obsolete! I can program the crap out of many thirty-year-olds who are still gainfully employed, as any employer who gets beyond his stereotype of what a fifty-year-old programmer is like, will find out. But this free and easy access to third-world-wage programmers means they don't have to confront their stereotypes. They don't have to take risks on hiring someone of my age. they don't have to expend the necessary effort to find the good talent. They're the ones who are being coddled, not me!
Isn't it ironic that at the same time that baby-boomer retirement and its effects on the budget are serious political and economic concerns, baby-boomer programmers are being pushed out the door in droves?
You free trade absolutists sound to me approximately the same as Soviet commisars. "Comrades, you may be dying in these awful coal mines, but remember, we're suffering so that your grandchidren will experience the perfect society, Communism, which will be heaven on earth. So stop whining and keep digging that coal!"
From the free trade absolutist we hear, "People, protectionism never works. Free trade always does. So never mind that in your lifetime we pull two or three careers away from you and move them to lower wage countries, you guys should just 'move up the value chain' and learn the skills that will make you competitive. So stop whining and get yourself a new career."
I was a machinist once. That job moved to Mexico and the field didn't look promising. But I'd been messing with computers so I made a career switch at 35. I forced myself to learn programming. Would I have done so had I known I would be virtually unemployable at 50? I doubt it. But I didn't know that, so I learned C, C++, java, relational databases, oop, uml. And damnit, I'm good, as anyone who's ever worked with me would tell you. But now I hear one of two things at almost all jobs I'm lucky enough to interview for
- we want someone who knows skill X like the back of his hand. (Never mind that I could learn it in about 2 days).
- you're overqualified for this position.
About all I can find are low-wage consulting gigs that offer no health insurance. And these damned economists sit up there and have the nerve to tell me that I'm not seeing the whole picture. As if they are! They don't see me or anyone like me. They're nothing but whores for the corporations who pay them. Now I suppose you might say I should go back to college and study nano-technology, but what's the point? Even a young guy making that his career would have to expect that once the technology was perfected, his job too would be farmed out.The reason this is happening is in part because we allowed high tech, the golden goose of jobs, to write its own ticket and hyperaccelerate a process that should have taken three or four decades into less than decade.
The only way you can succeed at high tech is to make your millions in the first ten years. If you haven't by then you'll be judged over the hill. To me that's fundamentally inhuman, and that's exactly what's wrong with your free market absolutism.
"Coddled" my ass.
High tech corporations were showered with all kinds of benefits, tax breaks, etc., largely because they were viewed as an engine of job creation. No taxes on e-commerce. Gotta grow those high-tech industries. Your tax dollars and mine built the Internet. We then gave it to the corporations, and now, all of a sudden, it's all theirs, and the hell with your jobs, we'll move 'em anywhere we damn please, thank you very much.
In the long run, we're all dead.
Luskin himself on the responsibility of board moderators for content expressed therein:
5 8. html
http://www.thestreet.com/comment/openbook/10609
August 30, 2000 -
The worst solution to the problem of manipulation on discussion boards is to shift the responsibility for enforcement from the regulators to the board sponsors. The host of an online discussion board is no more in a position to monitor and assure the quality of every posted message than a "common carrier" such as AT&T is to monitor every utterance made over its telephone network.
>>I don't agree, however, that communism would ever work on a large scale. I base this on human nature alone though.
True enough.
However, what's usually overlooked is the other side of this coin. Free market absolutism is every bit as antithetical to human nature as communism is.
Set up communism and black markets will emerge. People will inevitably try to get around regulations no matter how benevolent their purpose may seem or even be.
Set up an absolute free market and people will revolt against the assumption that they must willingly give up their jobs and their lives just because someone halfway round the world can be forced to do the same thing cheaper.
It doesn't help, either, that some of the loudest voices for free market absolutism are in reality only too glad to let governments intercede for them whenever they get control of the government.
A market with regulation is the way to go. How much regulation is the stuff of politics. But the absolutists are wrong.
- Secret ballot. Nobody but the voter must know who he voted for.
- Integrity of the ballot. Nobody, not even the voter, should be allowed to remove from the polling place an official copy of his vote, to prevent vote sales. Nobody, not even the voter should be allowed to remove from the polling place, a blank ballot, to prevent vote sales by chain voting.
- Audit trail. The count needs to be verifiable and challengeable.
- Fair. There should no partial counts available to some parties and not others, no communication between the system running the voting and the polling place while polling is going on. For a reported example of this, see this article, linked to by Garfinkel.
Many of the "solutions" I've seen bandied about here fail to meet one or more of these requirements.Having said that, there are, of course, problems with the present systems. One new one is the advent of inexpensive digital cameras which offer the possibility of voters' copying their votes to participate in vote-buying schemes against systems such as optically-scanned paper ballots which were previously secure against this. Solutions will have to be found for this. Perhaps it will have to be made illegal to bring a camera into a voting booth.
But the keys to democracy should not be sold cheaply. Some of those who so glibly propose these schemes sound like nothing so much as wannabe Bill Gateses.
Corrupt people would LOVE a situation where you could buy someone like this and they (but not anyone else) would have a way to prove that you delivered on your promise to vote as paid for.
The scenario you outline (current situation) helps to prevent massive vote buying. The "print the ballot after you vote on a touchscreen" scenario would enable massive vote buying as would any system that did not prevent "chain voting".
The requirement is this:
No one but the voter should be able to know how the voter voted. (secret ballot)
The important corollary is this: No one (not even the voter) should be able to remove from the polling place any ballot materials, be it a filled in ballot or a blank ballot. Every blank ballot distributed should be accounted for.
Very good, AC!
When messing with the internal workings of democracy it behooves technologists making proposed solutions to have some humility, for Chrissakes.
Do not even think of proposing a solution until you understand the problem - which includes the understanding the reasons why what currently exists has come to be.
It is good to see the emphasis on the chain-voting problem. Three years ago I would argue with fellow geeks ripping "solutions" to the Florida mess off the top of their heads onto napkins, imagining "fixes" of all sorts without knowing the history, the "requirements" of secrecy, fraud-prevention, etc.
More disturbingly, in the chaos after Florida, some were not just scribbling on napkins for the geek fun of it. They saw a business opportunity and sold all sorts of high-tech flim-flammery to bedazzled election officials.
You can't offer a solution without knowing the requirements! And the keys to democracy must not be sold so easily. Back off, geek, and come back when you can show that you understand the entire issue.