Should they be excused?

Phil Windley interprets Jim Flowers to be saying that...

Jim's fundamental point, I think, is that getting real people with real problems (i.e. elections office staff) in the debate will add significantly to level of discussion and move us closer to real solutions.

But this seems to ignore that so called real people with real problems *already* purchased and implemented unbelievably corruptable electronic voting solutions in order to replace the existing corrupted mechanical voting solutions.

Jim's position also seems to ignore that at least in some cases (e.g. in California) the use of such systems is not only deplorable, but it is explicitly *illegal*.

Yet more evidence that computer programmers are effectively writing the laws in many cases through the implementation of systems that fail to obey the law. At least in California the situation appears to be improving. Whether machines will be corrected before they're used again, and what retributions that would entail, is yet to be determined.