At Sunday's meeting, McKay--who called forPrabhu's impeachment--said that it would have beennext to impossible for another perpetrator tobring off the election fraud last week.

That person would have had to lie to Jewett andrisk identifying another committee members' ballotwhen the dean asked the students to claim theiroriginal ballots, he said.

But, according to the theory, if theperpetrator identified one of the four ballots heor she had created and scattered around theoffice, the risk of identifying a ballot that hadalready been claimed would be eliminated.

Only one of the four scattered ballots wasclaimed.

Alternatively, the sources suggested, theperpetrator could have included among thescattered ballots one of the originals stolen fromthe hat--resulting in it being identified bysomeone else--and then not identify a ballot ashis or her own.

That would account for one of the twoindividuals who told Jewett they were unable toidentify their ballots. It would also explain thefact that the extra ballot that was claimed was onthe original paper that Prabhu distributed tocommittee members before the election.

According to the sources, their deductionswould narrow the field of suspects to threeindividuals--the two who failed to identifyballots and the third who identified the extraballot.

Kalkanis, Duncan and Heinicke all said that thetheory is "plausible."

"I will guarantee that I will bring this up toeveryone else concerned," Kalkanis said. "Butthere are several other equally plausible theoriesthat we are looking into right now."

Kalkanis would not disclose the other theories.

Heinicke said he had instructed the panel toinvestigate all possibilities.

"There is nothing I would love more than tofind out who did this, so that the council canhave a clear name," Heinicke said