Cryptology association lost key needed to run its election

"That problem related to the fact that the IACR's bylaws require three members of its election committee to each hold a portion of the cryptographic key material required to jointly decrypt the results. "This aspect of Helios' design ensures that no two trustees could collude to determine the outcome of an election or the contents of individual votes on their own: all trustees must provide their decryption shares," the update explains."

"As explained in November 21 election update, the association (IACR) used an electronic voting system called "Helios" to run its elections, with members able to vote between October 17 and November 16. That phase of the election seems to have gone off without a hitch. But when vote-counting started, the association "encountered a fatal technical problem that prevents us from concluding the election and accessing the final tally.""

IACR ran an election using the Helios electronic voting system with voting between October 17 and November 16. The voting phase completed successfully, but vote-counting encountered a fatal technical problem that prevented accessing the final tally. IACR bylaws require three election-committee trustees to jointly provide decryption shares for Helios to decrypt results. One trustee irretrievably lost their private key and could not compute their decryption share. Helios therefore could not complete the decryption process or verify the outcome. IACR voided the election, accepted the trustee's resignation, and will start a new election from scratch.

Read at Theregister