But Blickstead said that he does not feel the election commission was unreasonable in investigating the complaint.
“They are just doing their job. I think members of the election commission knew that there wasn’t any merit and they just wanted to double check,” he said.
Upon receipt of a complaint, the election commission begins a preliminary investigation and gathers evidence to investigate the claims. It requires a one third vote of the election commission in order to begin a formal investigation.
“In almost any complaint that’s filed for a matter above a Category C there is a formal investigation,” Monteiro said. “It’s a procedure used to gather more information.”
Mahan and Blickstead said they did not know who filed the complaint against them, but surmised that it was not another candidate, but a supporter of another candidate.
“It seems like a kind of underhanded political move,” Mahan said. “It really is pathetic, whoever did this. It’s just some political back-stabbing.”
Several of the Mahan-Blickstead posters in Eliot House have also been crossed out with black marker.
“There’s definitely someone out there that doesn’t like us,” Mahan said. “We haven’t gotten any penalties yet. We’ve run the cleanest campaign as we can.” The Blickstead-Mahan ticket is the only one out of four that has not yet received any penalties by the election commission.
Last night, the election commission also penalized presidential candidate Aaron S. Byrd ’05 for sending an unsolicited mass e-mail to 433 residents of Dunster House.
Byrd is being forced to return $18.65 of his campaign material to the election commission, bringing hit total penalties to $88. Last Friday, Byrd was asked to remove $17 worth of his posters and fliers for campaigning in classrooms.
Montiero said that he does not know whether or not Byrd will be able to find nearly $20 more of campaign materials to remove. But if Byrd does not comply with the penalty, all of his campaigning would have to stop, Monteiro said.
Voting for the election will close at noon today.
—Staff writer Ebonie D. Hazle can be reached at hazle@fas.harvard.edu.