I'm not a member of the team, but I've got a pretty good imagination, so I'll give it a whirl.
When you bring the ends of the RP together, their electricity jumps and they complete the circuit. Now while it would theoetically be correct that you could touch a program on the hand and foot and complete the circuit, it's not practical. If you hit a program with only one end, the circuit isn't complete and it gets grounded.
On a side note, Mercury was able to use hers like escrimina sticks becasue that's the subroutine she downloaded for them. Jet got the Suffusion and LOL routines instead.