Yukon NDP Leader Liz Hanson says she's pleased with the results of the federal NDP leadership vote, which made Thomas Mulcair the new leader Saturday night.

Of the four leadership candidates who visited the Yukon, Hanson told the Star today, she felt Thomas Mulcair had a good understanding of the complex challenges facing the North.

"I quite frankly felt that Thomas Mulcair really does understand, particularly having dealt, both as an opposition member as well as a member of government, the Quebec (Liberal) government, with the complex challenges of industrial development and environmental issues,” said Hanson, who attended the convention.

While Hanson was impressed with the leadership abilities of all the candidates, she was particularly keen to see how Nathan Cullen fared in the vote.

"There are seven excellent leaders there and they'll all be excellent in the front bench, but Nathan, if you look at succession planning, there's a future leader,” she said.

The vote wasn't without a delay or two, as technical problems caused delays for party members trying to vote online.

But Hanson said emails were sent out regularly by the NDP executive updating members about voting deadline extensions as they worked out the issues. She herself was sending emails as she received new updates on the situation.

Voting was first restricted to people voting from inside the convention centre in Toronto and then opened up to people voting from elsewhere in the country in an attempt to speed things up.

"But even at that, and I think there's an investigation going on, there was some reported hacking of the system on several of the rounds of voting, and that was being reported by fairly credible members of the media,” she said.

Hanson believes most people were eventually able to vote, but isn't sure about the number of people who became frustrated and gave up.

"My sense is people wanted to see the outcome and they just kept going at it, trying again and again,” she said of the four-ballot exercise.

Even with the hiccups, Hanson said, "it was pretty amazing in my mind to think about the fact that people were voting in Whitehorse or other places in the Yukon at the same time as we were doing it in Toronto. It's a great idea, but it looks to me as though there are always going to be people who will try to thwart it.”

Other Yukoners in attendance at the convention included former Yukon MP and NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin, who, with ex-leader Alexa McDonough, took the stage with the victorious Mulcair on Saturday night; Ryan Stewart, the Yukon NDP's chief of staff; and party loyalists John Walsh and Jean-Francois des Lauriers.