The members of Ocean Pines Association’s Election Committee didn’t have to resign last week, and as far as is publicly known, no one expected them to  after the board of directors and some of the candidates in the summer’s election realized that the vote totals didn’t add up.

How it turned out that more votes were counted in the initial official tally than were in the follow-up hand recount more than a month later remains a mystery, but one thing association members should understand is that the Election Committee members are innocent.

The problem had to involve the association’s voting system of apportioning voting power according to the number of properties owned, the online voting mechanisms, voter confusion or some combination of all three. But most assuredly the committee members were victims of bad information.

Had that not been the case, the voting totals produced during the recount would not have broken between the candidates the way they did, with the margins of victory being roughly the same.

As association President Doug Parks said in his announcement of the committee’s resignation, finding volunteers sincerely committed to serving the community is difficult, and no one can doubt the level of commitment of these committee members.

Had they not held themselves to high standards, they would not have resigned in the wake of the recount.

Still, determining exactly what went wrong and explaining it to the public is of paramount importance, and the best people to dive in and sort out the precise cause of this miscount have stood down, one would assume, as a matter of honor.

That’s unfortunate, since these are the people most qualified to examine the problem and report on it. Were they amenable to undertaking this task, let them do it and then, if they want to resign and turn over the committee’s responsibility to others, fine. But in the meantime, the job isn’t finished and they should be the ones to finish it.