SEATTLE, WA — The International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) officially canceled its board election Monday after realizing the high-tech encryption used to protect the voting results worked a little too well.

The group confirmed that the election security protocols required three separate digital keys to unlock the ballot box. Unfortunately, one official “irretrievably lost” their key, rendering the votes mathematically impossible to count. The organization, which is comprised of the world’s leading experts on keeping data safe, admitted they had effectively locked themselves out of their own house.

“This is actually a huge success story for cryptography,” said Dr. Aris Thorne, Vice President of Losing Important Things. “We proved that our code is unbreakable. Even we can’t break it. The fact that we can’t legally seat a new board of directors is a small price to pay for total secrecy.”

Following the massive tech fail, the association is reviewing its procedures. Experts suggest the lost key was likely on a laptop that was wiped, or perhaps written on a napkin that went through the wash.

“We considered writing the password on the back of a router, but that seemed too risky,” said Sarah Jenkins, Chief of Looking Under The Desk. “Going forward, we will likely replace the complex math with a ‘show of hands’ system, provided nobody loses their hands.”

At publishing time, the IT department was asking the board if they had tried turning the election off and back on again.

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