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UCI Student Action:In an action that will be closely watched by the American Civil Liberties Union and the administration at UC Irvine, the student council tonight will decide whether to begin counting ballots cast in last week’s student election.

The ballots were to have been counted Friday, but the 25-member council decided to postpone the count because the UCI administration indicated it might intervene, possibly even invalidating the election results and calling for a new election.

Horace Mitchell, UCI’s vice chancellor for student affairs, said the administration is concerned about the election because the Associated Students election commission last week confiscated La Voz Mestiza, a Chicano students’ newspaper which violated election rules by endorsing candidates the day of the vote. Mitchell said another campus paper was not confiscated after it committed a similar infraction during the original vote.