The results of the 2025 elections for the president and board members at the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) have been botched because the results of the super-secure cryptographic e-voting system cannot be retrieved due to the "accidental loss" of a decryption key.

https://iacr.org/news/item/27138

While human mistakes happen, this incident comes under very troubling circumstances.

Why does an e-voting system of an association like IACR not support t-out-of-n threshold decryption?

Why is a system where a single party can collude to invalidate the vote considered acceptable?

Wouldn't be wiser to freeze to the date of November 20th the eligibility status for voting instead of "calling to arms" IACR members who had previously decided to opt out from Helios emails?

Does the identity of some of the candidates to Director represent a problem for IACR?

Crypto as in cryptology, not cryptocurrency.

Shame, since the schadenfreude would be much stronger in the case of cryptocurrencies.

Still funny though.

More comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46020596