Petition Urges 'Cliffe Council Recount Votes

The Radcliffe Student Government will meet in its rooms at 4 p.m. this afternoon to consider action on a petition calling for a recount of the ballots in the recent presidential election, retiring president Maryslice McArdle announced last night. The election involved saw Nancy Barrow '53 capture the student government leadership by an 1S vote margin over Dele Gilmore.

The petition, which contained the 25 signatures required by the Annex Constitution, was delivered yesterday afternoon to Miss McArdle, who called this afternoon's meeting at once.

The petition read, "We the undersigned do petition that because of the closeness of election in the recent Student Council presidential ballotting, ballots be counted in an open meeting," and was signed by 25 girls, mostly from Barnard Hall.

Statistically speaking, it is probable that the exact totals of a recount would differ from the announced tabulations, although there is no way of judging whether the change in totals would acect the election's outcome.

Each ballot in the election must have had three choices to be valid, which were weighed inversely three, two, and one in the counting. Since each valid ballot must have six "votes" on it, the total votes received by all candidates in the election should also be divisible by six, thereby giving the total number of valid ballots.

But the total number of votes announced, 4,156, cannot be divided by six, so that some error my have entered into the counting, though its magnitude cannot be determined