The root cause is probably a bad element but that should be caught by the grounding. I had a problem in my house with this that traced back to a bad ground clamp on the grounding electrode. The whole house was "hot to ground" and the place it showed up was standing on the terazzo floor barefooted, touching the stove.
A real morning "waker upper".
The fact that the burner is hot to the stove frame seems to indicate this is a more localized failure. The real answer might be as simple as throwing away the bad element. Those burner pans sitting on the enamaled stove surface are not really a grounding path.
[This message has been edited by gfretwell (edited 11-01-2006).]
