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' ft Clouding around Partly cloudy and windy to day. High in the low 40s; low in the mid-20s. Nelson speaks Former U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson will discuss environ mental interest groups at 10 a.m. in 226 Union. Serving the students and (he University community since 1893 Volume 83, Issue 132 Wednesday, February 10, 1982 Chapel Hill, North Carolina NewWS portsArts 962-0245 BusinessAdvertising 962 1163 o n iicDlcBinitt mum iw .1 1L vlS eker take "TT9 J I TVO TT TTn easily Unofficial vote shows Vandenbergh ahead As of early Wednesday morning, un certified results showed that Mike Van denbergh was several votes away from winning the student body presidential race and John Drescher had won a deci sive victory over Jonathan Rich in the Daily Tar Heel editor's race. At press time, the Elections Board was inspecting ballots that were rejected by an electronic vote counter. The rejected bal lots included write-in candidiates, blank ballots and voided ballots. The board voted to decide on the validity of each ballot as the inspection progressed. Elections Board Chairman Mark Jacobson said the board could not certify Audit Board bill passes as fee falls By KATHERINE LONG DTH Staff Writer A referendum to change Student Government Audit Board bylaws passed by,.a Jarge margin, and referendum to increase the Student Activities Fee failed in a closer vote in Tuesday's campus elec tions. The Audit Board controls how Student Activities Fees are spent after they are allocated to campus organizations by the Campus Governing Council. The unof ficial vote was 3,581 to 892 in favor of the referendum. The second referendum to charge an extra $2.50 in Student Activities Fees fail ed by a closer margin of 2,732 to 2,172. CGC Finance Committee member Jonathan Reckford, a proponent of the referendum, said the council would have to take money out of the General Surplus to give to organizations that need more money. "We're gonna need one (a fee in crease) next year," he said. Some polltenders reported that a few voters did not vote for the referendums because they did not see them printed on the back of the ballot. More than 7,000 votes were in cast in the presidential elec tion compared to only 4.900 total votes cast for or against the referenda. By former senator the election until the rejected ballots had been examined. Certification is expected sometime today. More than 7,000 people voted in the Tuesday election, reaching totals of 500 more than last year and 1,500 more than in 1980. Unofficial results showed Drescher with 4,006 votes at 58 percent over Rich wiih 2,837 at 41 percent. Vandenbergh led with 3,475 votes (49.9 percent), Mark Canady had 1,612 votes (23.7 percent), Summey Orr gained 1,452 votes (20.9 percent) and Tim Smith re ceived 358 votes (5.1 percent). There were 61 write-in votes. I . Elections Board officials said early Wednesday that between 8 to 10 voided votes would give Vandenbergh the ma jority he needed to win the presidency. Canady said, however, that if Vanden bergh was certified as winner of the presi dential race he would ask for a vote re count. "I'll ask for a recount,'' Canady said, "but that is in no way a negative reflec tion on Mike (Vandenbergh's) campaign. He ran a good race." "I don't think there'll be a run-off,'" Vandenbergh said. "I've never seen such support. "I congratulate the other candidates on running clean campaigns," Vandenbergh said. "I almost didn't run this year be cause of the backbiting in last year's cam . paign.":. ..t t : .. .. . ., Drescher is scheduled to take over editorship of the DTH Feb. 22. "I guess I'll start right away talking about what position will be filled by whom," he said. Rich, who left the tabulation in Great Hall after early returns showed him far behind Drescher, said problems with or ganization may had led to his loss, "I would have chosen a few positions dif ferently;' there were a few areas where I waited too long to put the right people in. "This is real politics here," Rich said. "It's kind of an unusual phenomenon you see on campus. I might have been a bit naive about it." Both were happy that the campaigning was over. "I am not sure I'd thought we'd ever get here," Drescher said. "I don't think physically I could have gone on." "I am glad it's over," Rich said. "It was like the rest of my life had ceased to exist. It's a lot of pressure, physically, feeling like you're on stage all the time." Each of the presidential candidates said he felt the campaign had been clean and tried to explain why the election went as it did. See RESULTS on page 2 f . " -ITl - i xzvf " H ;J u -K ,t "... w. . & jfimiiiiininii'iiiiiiiiii.i' m ihi(MI-iiii n r i ill n Knnnmur imiraniininr ifm i niiii'.i'iililnminnl xi ii ! iin1 1 r,r ,'in i inm, 'TViiifj.ut'H'.-kju'j.uj uuhu.ui.i-j f" V '(wmwwwiwwtowiwi " ;y V A P , : i T" iiwiwi iniiiiiiwrr rri ; .. . V 1 V I 9 J I I i - I I iff"-""irit"T'"nn,irivnai tbi miiiTmirint-rTirinTirrriYiiiiiiriiiiiiririiiiiiiiiiia Problems pbgue new TJ71 John Drescher, top, celebrates with supporters in Great Haii. Above, William S. Speer, of the Air mac Technical Systems, and Sean Alvarez, ot the Elections Board, operate ballot counting machine, and Mike Vandenbergh, right, watches as returns show him slightly ahead. Photos by Scott Sharpe. ly system By JONATHAN SMYLIE DTH Staff Writer Despite a number of delays in the counting process caused by a computer malfunction, the use of an electronic counting machine helped the Elections Board run Tuesday's elections more smoothly, Board Chairman Mark Jacob son said. . "It went a little slower than we thought but otherwise very well," Jacobson said. The counting machine saved many hours of sorting and counting ballots, he said. In past elections, the results of some races were not known for two or three days. This was the first time that a com puterized machine had been used in UNC elections. The board borrowed the com puterized counter from American Tabulating Systems on a trial basis to determine if the board would want to buy a counter for use in future elections. Paper dust caught inside the counting machine caused the longest slowdown in the counting. Before the computer broke down at 10:30 p.m., it had been counting ballots at a rate of 200 per minute before it had -to be stopped for cleaning, ATS representative Bill Speer said. Until the machine was fixed around midnight a stand-by counter was used. Because the substitute machine was not equipped with an automatic feeder, Elec tions Board members had to hand feed the ballots into the machine while waiting for the original counter to be fixed. Hand feeding the ballots slowed the counting to about 60 ballots per minute. The only other delay was that the coun ting started about an hour later than ex pected because some of the ballot boxes did not arrived on time. Ballots were tabulated in a simple two step process. As the ballots were fed into the counter a long white tickertape slip of paper came rolling out the top of the machine. The tape listed, codes of the race, can didate and number of votes received at each polling site. Board members decoded the tapes and projected the totals on the screen for the close to 200 people watching the returns in Great Hall. See BOARD on page 2 VMM Wait's policies attacked By JIM WRINN DTH Staff Writer Former Sen. Gaylord Nelson, speaking at UNC Tuesday, said Interior Secretary James Watt's policy of developing "locked up" public lands was designed to eliminate or compromise environmental regulations. The Wisconsin Democrat, addressing about 180 people in the Union, said, "Watt has created a nationwide controversy with his repeated assertions that vast resources of minerals, gas and oil are 'locked up' on public lands because of the influence of perverse environmentalists, onerous rules and regulations, bad laws passed by Congress and signed by Republican and Democratic presidents and general bad manage ment by his predecessors." Nelson said oil, coal and timber companies had endorsed Watt openly through "simplistic and misleading" advertisements designed to confuse the public's understanding of conserva tion. "Simply and directly put, Watt and the energy, timber and mining companies' claims of a massive resource 'lock-up' on public lands is a monumental misrepresentation," he said. Natural resources exist on public lands, but their use is restricted by laws or permitted only under certain strict conditions and guidelines, Nelson said. "Ninety-nine percent of what he (Watt) is say ing is political flimflam," he said. "Many people believe him, and many powerful interests are behind his drive for uncontrolled exploitation of the public lands." Nelson said Watt and the industries he repre emcU ai the Kocky Mountain Elates Legai Foundation had opposed most previous major conservation legislation. "Watt's central premise ... is the claim that there is a massive 'lock-up' of vital resources on public lands," Nelson said. "It is around this premise that he has developed the justification for most of his proposals for a massive reversal of previously established policies." Nelson said that under Watt's policies, all ma jor categories of public lands were available for resource extraction without restrictions; but Congress would not allow wilderness areas or wildlife refuges to be degraded even though they only represent 30 million of the 375 million acres of public lands in the contiguous United States. Nelson cited Watt's stand on Alaska, which contains about half the federal public lands, as part of his distortion tactics. "The Alaska Lands Bill was- passed by the Congress 10 months ago," he said. "Tens of millions of acres were 'locked-up' pending a Congressional decision on designation of these lands for parks, forests and pending Alaska state and native selection of the 145 million acres they're entitled to under the law." "The Alaska natives and the states have yet to select about 90 million acres. That 90 million is counted as part of Watt's 'lock-up. Yet when the selection process is completed, this 'lock-up will dissolve and disappear in thin air, and that land will be available for economic development. "What the administration is doing with this policy is borrowing from, future generations to pay our debts today," he said; Nelson's speech was sponsored by the Carolina Union, ECOS and the Institute for En vironmental Studies. z J V fey-. ..it'.. f H4 '-' 7 - ? : - V ' " " j ' ' - I Civil riglits groiips oppose N.C. tate votiiig test By TAMMY DAVIS DTH Staff Writer 'DTHJayHym. Former Sen. Gaylord Nelson ...speaking Tuesday night Civil rights groups are disputing the legitimacy of a voter registration residency test used recently at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a predominantly black school in Greensboro. George Simkins, director of . the Greensboro chapter of the National Association for the Advance ment of Colored People, will go before the Guilford County Board of Elections Feb. 24 to protest the questionnaire, which he says "prevents students of their constitutional right to vote." ; The protest is based on Guilford election records, which show that of the 367 N.C. A&T students who completed the questionnaire, 1 16 were not allowed to register to vote. "It is discriminatory," Simkins said this week. "If the students fail just one of these questions, they can not vote." Simkins said the 13-question residency test includ ed questions about financial independence, church affiliation and. basis for residency in Guilford Coun ty. One question asks where the student plans to live if he "flunks out" of N.C A&T. - . "These tests aren't used in colleges at Chapel Hill, Charlotte or Winston-Salem. I don't see why A&T has to use them,." he said. Simkins, who has submitted a formal protest to the U.S. Department of Justice, said one A&T registrar said he had never seen this type of questionnaire at UNC-Greensboro, Greensboro College or Guilford College. That Guilford County is still under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gives Simkins a chance as he goes before the board, he said. "If they continue to use this questionnaire, we're going to take them to the federal courts to try and get an injunction," Simkins said. George Gardner, executive director of the North Carolina American Civil Liberties Union in Greensboro, said he heard the test for N.C. A&T was more rigorous than those used at UNC-Greensboro or Guilford College. "The ironic thing is that the A&T test was done by the most active member of the Greensboro NAACP," he said. Gardner said the only solution would be to make the questionnaires the same for all schools in the state. "There is no plot behind this ...perhaps just a misinterpretation of the voting laws," Gardner said. Alex Brock, State Board of Elections chairman, said he thought the tests were not discriminatory. "The-North Carolina Supreme Court has indicated that such a questionnaire might be appropriate," he said. . Brock said that other complaints about registra tion questionnaires had come from Appalachian State University in Boone and Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. No complaints have come from Chapel Hill, he said. Brock said the state's Constitution and Supreme Court interpretations of it meant that "residency for the purpose of voting shall be deemed to be at that place at which that resident has domiciled." The voter registration tests began after this 1972 decision, he said. "We were grateful when cases went to court, because once the Supreme Court ruled, we quit get ting complaints," he said. See TEST on page 2
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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