They wouldnt know the result before providing the key.
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.