Questions over voter influencing, ballot-box stuffing and counting methods have caused skepticism about Wednesday’s mock election results, said Chris Miller, Iowa State Daily editor.

Early in October, the Government of the Student Body approached the Daily to be an objective party to sponsor the mock election.

Wednesday’s election was staffed by members of the GSB and the Daily staff. The Daily planned to prohibit students from voting twice by highlighting student’s names in the yet-to-be-released ISU telephone directory. Students voted for president, U.S. Senator and U.S. House of Representatives.

But the election didn’t run as smoothly as expected.

Throughout the day, several people stood around the ballot box and appeared to be influencing students’ votes.

Miller cited the influencing of voters as poor quality control on the Daily’s part. However, people shouldn’t have been around the polls telling students how to vote, he said.

In the actual election process, political activists must stand outside a substantial distance from the polls. What happened around the mock election was “a gross violation of the democratic process,” Miller said.

GSB Sen. John Hamilton, ballot box attendee, said few GSB members helped with the event. Because Hamilton had a difficult time recruiting attendees, many of the volunteers were politically active students.

Miller said he should have better screened ballot-box attendees and instructed them on the “dos and don’ts when working an election.”

Hamilton and Steve Baumgarten, a member of the GSB finance committee, both helped at the ballot box and helped count the ballots Thursday. Both are members of GSB and the College Republicans.

Mock election votes were counted early Thursday afternoon by Hamilton, Baumgarten and two Daily staff members. Ballot counter Tim Frerking, the Daily’s university editor, had some suspicions when he took the first handful of ballots out of the box.

“After counting several ballots, I came upon a well-folded stack of ballots. All of them had votes for one party and had the same color ink and similar circles. It was like they were all stuffed in the box at once,” he said.

At that point, some Daily staff became skeptical about the election.

Miller, who blamed himself for the problems, said there is a chance the election could be legitimate, but there is also a good chance it isn’t. “I take full responsibility,” Miller said. “For that I apologize to everyone who voted in the election and to the Iowa State community.”

Miller said he should have put more oversight and organization into the mock election. “We’ve made a mistake.”

The intention of the Daily was to fairly present information gathered about campus political views, Miller said. Because of this, he said he cannot be 100 percent sure the “information was gathered ethically.”

However, ethical information gathering was not the only issue. Several hours after counting the ballots, Miller received a fax which stated the results of the Senate contest in the Daily/GSB mock election.

The Daily did not release this information. Miller said the results of the election should not have been disclosed until they were printed in today’s Daily.

Baumgarten said he released the information. However, he said he did not realize the unpublished information was the property of the Daily.

“There’s enough of a hint of impropriety to warrant skepticism,” Miller said. He said he could not present the information as an accurate representation of political views on campus.

The Daily plans to compile student political views again next week, but specifics are not definite. A telephone survey is a possibility.

In Wednesday’s mock election, 442 of Iowa State’s 23,899 students voted. Bob Dole received 248 votes, while President Clinton received 137 votes.

Results also showed Republican Senatorial Candidate Jim Ross Lightfoot won with 270 votes. Democrat Tom Harkin received 147 votes. Very few students voted in the U.S. Representative races. In some cases candidates received no votes.