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U.C. Misconduct May Invalidate Referendum

Constitutional Violations Are Seen

But Austin said she only responded to Beys'offer to provide background information. "I wasn'taware that him telling me things was conditionalon my 'yes' vote."

Austin said she had been warned by herroommate, who had voted earlier, that Beys was"very confrontational." Ironically, Austincharacterized Beys' conduct as "in-your-face" aswell.

"Just the fact that he obviously looked at myballot was totally inappropriate, and his tacticswere intimidation tactics," Austin said.

"I know that a lot of people saw what was goingon and got turned off. They either decided to tryto vote when he wasn't there or not to vote atall," Austin added.

According to Garza, Beys should have knownbetter than to try to influence the vote. "Twoweeks ago the executive board concluded thatabsolutely no information could be given out tostudents by council members doing tabling, even ifthey were asked direct questions."

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"The rules were made very specific and veryclear, that influencing the vote wasinappropriate," Garza added. "And Mike Beys was atthat meeting."

But Beys said last night that he didn't thinkhe did anything wrong. "As I understood it, ifsomeone asked us a direct question about thereferendum we could answer it and speak ourminds," Beys said. "it wasn't a gag order."

But Gabay said Beys went too far. "Councilmembers know that they shouldn't influence votersand they certainly know they shouldn't antagonizevoters," he said. "I just don't know what to say[about Beys]."

"These are grounds to invalidate some of theballots," Garza said.

The Civil Liberties Union of Harvard (CLUH)even voted last night to take a formal position onthe conduct of the referendum.

"This totally calls into question thelegitimacy of the votes," said Jol A. Silversmith'94, former director of CLUH. "There is no way tosort out the valid votes from the invalidones--this certainly can't then be called anacceptable referendum."

But, Silversmith said, perhaps the council hasalready given up. "There was no one at all tablingat Mather tonight.

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