In other news the owner of a vault whose key he threw away cannot access the contents.

It would be way worse if they somehow were able to decrypt the votes anyways without the key. Whether that be by retrieving the key from a backup or a flaw in the system. Because that would defeat the whole purpose.

All in all the technology they use is very interesting technically, but this event really demonstrates the tradeoff between security and convenience. Imagine if that was the election for a country... Oof