I am relatively new to bitcoin and electrum.

One thing I don't get about electrum is why does it need to have a non standard server?

Couldn't the client connect directly to bicoind servers nodes using jsonrpc?

And about security, couldn't the client connect to multiple servers in parallel and ask for things in parallel (sort of a map reduce interaction) to achieve:
- Speed: you just take notice of the N fastest responses that are consistent with each other
- Security: you are NOT trusting one node, but a bunch of them, just like bitcoind but without the blockchain download hassle.