THUNDER BAY — Matt Pearson went to Thunder Bay's city hall Monday night expecting to watch the results come in from the election for the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board.
Instead, he and all the other candidates for the separate school board found out that none of them would learn their fate that night.
It was because of an error on the ballot in the Municipality of Shuniah.
Pearson's name had been left off the list of candidates for the board, meaning no one could vote for him.
As a result, an emergency was declared under the Municipal Elections Act, suspending the separate school board election in Shuniah and the release of any results for that election from anywhere in Thunder Bay and surrounding area.
None of the results can be released until a new election for the Catholic board is conducted in Shuniah.
"I've heard it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a month," Pearson said in an interview Tuesday.
This was his first entry into politics, but he's taking the unexpected turn of events in stride despite being disappointed.
"Putting your name forward is a pretty emotional thing to do ...You've got family and friends watching. My little girl was excited. And then when you didn't find out, and the reason why was your name wasn't on the ballot ...You don't want to make anyone's life harder than it has to be. Mistakes happen."
Pearson said he's sure the people in Shuniah felt bad too.
"I was disappointed, not only for myself but for all the candidates who put their name forward. You kind of go into the evening thinking 'Ah, cool, let's find out what happened.'"
Before he heard any official explanation as to how his name was left off the list, Pearson was told indirectly that "it was a very honest mistake, the result of simple human error."
Shuniah clerk Kerry Bellamy confirmed that in response to an inquiry from TBnewswatch, saying the omission wasn't caught during the ballot-proofing stage.
It only came to light late Monday afternoon when it was spotted by a resident.
Bellamy said Shuniah is now in the process of reviewing provincial legislation and policies that apply to this situation, after which it will make the necessary arrangements for an election.
More information may be shared in the next few days.
The mistake and the need to withhold all separate school board results also delayed the release of the other election results in Thunder Bay on Monday night.
City Clerk Krista Power, the returning officer for the election, confirmed the lag was caused by the emergency initially declared by Shuniah, and subsequently declared by Thunder Bay.
"We needed to extract and hold safe and secure the results of the Catholic school board election, which meant that all the tabulators could not close at the polling stations. They needed to be powered down, brought to City Hall, and then one by one they needed to be tabulated, reconciled and confirmed," Power said in an interview.
She explained that the numbers for the separate board next had to be extracted both from the tabulated numbers and from the publicly-released data, and held secure.
"That was an additional step. What was normally one step across 13 polls became 13 individual steps."
Power estimated these extra steps added at least an hour to an hour-and-a-half to the process.
"The other piece, too, was that our online file did take 20 minutes to upload, which is wonderful because we had 22,000 people plus who voted by internet ballot," she said.
