Voting is one of those problems that is, on its face, very simple: write a name down, count how many people wrote each name down, person with most names wins.

Voting is one of those problems that is, on its face, very simple: write a name down, count how many people wrote each name down, person with most names wins. This seeming simplicity, combined with the fact that no one thus far has seemingly gotten it right, lends itself strongly towards all kinds of armchair opinions from anyone at all related to any of the fields involved. I'm a software engineer, for example. "Design and build me a system that collects votes and produces results." is in the format of the requests I get at my job on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, so I can take it and run with it, as I am trained to do. I can come up with all kinds of additional requirements in my head, tons of edge cases, different scenarios I need to watch out for, etc etc. Basically, as can anyone who does my job, I can turn it from a (immensely vague in this case) business need into a set of technical requirements. However, I am wholly unqualified to design a ballot device, despite the seeming simplicity of the request, and how it seems to fit nicely into my professional intake. Will that stop me or anyone else in my position from offering an opinion? Probably not! Thus, you get the constant "re"hashing of "old" arguments, because people see these problems as "simpler" than they actually are, and "re"voice the same ideas and concepts, because it seems like some obvious problems can be solved with "just a little" modification to the existing systems.