THUNDER BAY — Former Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Bill Mauro has maintained his early substantial lead in the race for mayor in Thunder Bay's 2018 municipal election,
After a delay of approximately 45 minutes in releasing some results, the first set of numbers, issued at about 9:15 p.m., showed Mauro with a lead of roughly 1,000 votes over former councillor Frank Pullia.
At 10:00 p.m., Mauro's total was updated to 10,286 compared with 9,373 for Pullia.
Former councillor Iain Angus was 5,200 votes behind Pullia, with former journalist Shane Judge in fourth place.
The city clerk's office said initially that the delay in releasing numbers was due to issues at two polling stations, but later clarified that the issue was related in part to decryption of data.
John Hannam, city clerk and the returning officer for the election, said decryption of online voting results got "hung up" at one point, after which more time was required to transfer the data to the city website.
Another contributor was the fact that the online system listed candidates in alphabetical order, by first name, whereas the ballots were organized alphabetically by last name.
