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.
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 was merely expanding on the hypothetical case where bad politics overcame a theoretically sound selection process.