Oops. Cryptographers cancel election results after losing decryption key.

One of the world’s premier security organizations has canceled the results of its annual leadership election after an official lost an encryption key needed to unlock results stored in a verifiable and privacy-preserving voting system. The International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) said Friday that the votes were submitted and tallied using Helios , an open source voting system that uses peer-reviewed cryptography to cast and count votes in a verifiable, confidential, and privacy-preserving way. Helios encrypts each vote in a way that assures each ballot is secret.

Other cryptography used by Helios allows each voter to confirm their ballot was counted fairly. An “honest but unfortunate human mistake” Per the association’s bylaws, three members of the election committee act as