I don't know if they used such a method, but it is possible to provide a proof for the key before it is actually useful.
E.g. everyone provides a hash for their key first, and the actual key a some seconds later, when all the hashes for the keys have arrived. Someone is 'cheating' by claiming key loss if s/he claims the s/he lost the key during that few seconds.
Even if this was an accident, isn't it theoretically possible for one of the trustees to intentionally not provide the key to trigger the re-election? There's no guarantee that the people will vote the same. I see this as a kind of vulnerability.
Even knowing that the results of a repeat election are likely to be the same, I can easily imagine someone being petty and "losing" their key to sabotage the process as a demonstration of power. It's just human nature at it's worst.
This is casting accusation as a member of a community, without a shred of a proof.
This is also not realistic and Occam's razor applies here strongly: why sabotage your career and frankly embarrass yourself just to make a tiny election delay, based on uncertain assumptions? This doesn't pass the sniff test.
In short, I think always assuming the worst in people is not healthy and we should trust that this was indeed a honest, unfortunate mistake. This could happen to everyone.
I'm sorry. I should have made it clear that I wasn't discussing the present situation of which I know nothing about and have no reason to doubt the good faith of all involved.
I was merely expanding on the hypothetical case where bad politics overcame a theoretically sound selection process.
The opposite is interesting to think about - for a commonly used threshold cipher, could you craft your part to secretly force a chosen plaintext regardless of the other parts?
