The overall post was okay, but the lead-in was too topical to be relevant more than a few months from now, and also wasn't really about software quality at all. What happened in Iowa was a lot of bureaucratic cock-up -- they got the wrong people (because favors or political or personal connections) to do entirely the wrong thing, and didn't bother to consult any of the people who could have helped them make better decisions. It's not substantially different from someone buying the shittiest available used car from a private party and the wheels falling off on the highway, and then trying to use that as an indictment of automotive build quality.
But.
Clearly software suffers from far more issues than other technical disciplines, and that is 100% because there are no common standards and, thus, no certification process or professional licensing.
When software developers and managers compare big software projects to big civil engineering projects, they keep missing the obvious educational and certification process required to become a civil engineer. Galloping Gerties and John Hancock Towers still happen occasionally, but then they become case studies for every prospective new engineer. Contrast this to software, where we all slang out code until we're bored and then self-educate by reading other people's war stories online.
The average man or woman that can build a porch for your house is subject to more licensing requirements than the developer that builds voting software. Let that sink in for a minute.
Programmers are quick to screech at the thought of being subjected to any kind of licensing or certification process, and yet we all have the horror stories of being forced to build and deploy utter garbage by upper management. Professional licensing would really help us here. We'd have a defense that would go, "I can't do that, it would make my license get reviewed."
I don't think this will ever happen though. The majority of programmers don't want it and nobody knows how to do it. They'd rather write and share navel-gazing articles from time to time, wondering about what could possibly be so very different in software from every other engineering discipline. 'Tis a mystery.