“Unfortunately, one of the three trustees has irretrievably lost their private key, an honest but unfortunate human mistake, and therefore cannot compute their decryption share. As a result, Helios is unable to complete the decryption process, and it is technically impossible for us to obtain or verify the final outcome of this election.”
⇒ that first paragraph is badly worded, but they’re not hiding facts.
I also think “3 out of 3” is not a good idea, as it allows any single key holder to prevent election outcomes that they don’t like (something that may have happened here, too. I don’t think cryptography experts often lose such keys by accident)
“Unfortunately, one of the three trustees has irretrievably lost their private key, an honest but unfortunate human mistake, and therefore cannot compute their decryption share. As a result, Helios is unable to complete the decryption process, and it is technically impossible for us to obtain or verify the final outcome of this election.”
⇒ that first paragraph is badly worded, but they’re not hiding facts.
I also think “3 out of 3” is not a good idea, as it allows any single key holder to prevent election outcomes that they don’t like (something that may have happened here, too. I don’t think cryptography experts often lose such keys by accident)