O.C. Absentee Ballot Count Ordered Halted : Election: A judge acts after Arlo Smith, Democratic candidate for attorney general, challenges the procedure.

As Democrat Arlo Smith’s lead faded Monday in the bitterly fought race for state attorney general with Republican Dan Lungren, Smith campaign attorneys were mounting a legal challenge in Orange County concerning the way absentee ballots are being tabulated.

In the first major update of the absentee ballot count since last Tuesday’s election, former five-term Congressman Lungren picked up 5,904 votes on Smith in Los Angeles County, the county registrar’s office announced.

Until Monday, Smith, the San Francisco district attorney, had led Lungren by 28,836 votes statewide with up to 500,000 absentee ballots remaining to be counted. A statewide update of absentee votes--which tend to tilt toward the Republican Party--is scheduled to be released by the secretary of state’s office today.

The Smith camp, which has raised the possibility of absentee-vote fraud, is moving to legally challenge the tabulation of absentee votes. The first step was their asking that the vote count be stopped in Orange County, where Lungren was leading by a 2-1 margin in semiofficial returns and where about 50,000 absentee ballots remain unopened, enough to possibly swing the election in Lungren’s favor.

Court actions elsewhere in the state are being considered.

After an unusual weekend hearing in Orange County, Superior Court Judge James Smith ordered Orange County Registrar of Voters Donald F. Tanney to cease counting absentees pending a hearing on the issue Wednesday unless Tanney alters his tabulating methods.

Tanney said his staff would have begun tabulating the ballots Sunday afternoon and could have issued an updated report today. But the judge’s order has temporarily frozen results in Orange County, leaving not just the race for attorney general up in the air, but also city council races in Anaheim and Costa Mesa.

Citing scattered reports across the state, the Smith camp has charged that GOP workers may have illegally submitted absentee ballot applications on behalf of an undetermined number of voters by forging signatures. The state election code requires that voters apply for their own absentee ballots. Smith is alleging that many voters who otherwise properly cast absentees did not apply for the ballots themselves.

Smith campaign attorneys are demanding that Tanney and other registrars not count absentees until they compare signatures on ballot applications with those on completed ballots.

County registrars throughout the state have been comparing the signatures on completed ballots with those on voters’ original affidavits of registration.

Until Wednesday’s hearing, Smith said, Tanney could begin his count anew only if he checked all three signatures--those on the registration affidavits, the ballot applications and the ballots themselves--to ensure that voters applied for their own absentee ballots. But Tanney, calling the method unnecessary and wasteful, said he would not proceed until after the hearing.

“My position is that what we’re doing is fine, and I want to fight that one out,” he said.

Marc Dann, Smith’s campaign manager, said: “Those are illegal votes. . . . The GOP saw a loophole, they knew . . . Orange County never checks applications.”

But GOP officials said Lungren may pick up more than enough votes elsewhere in the state today to surpass Smith even without Orange County’s reporting. In Los Angeles, where more than 60,000 absentees are still uncounted, Lungren’s 5,904-vote gain came out of 77,000 votes counted since Tuesday.

Terming Lungren’s gain in Los Angeles County “great,” campaign spokesman Dave Puglia said, “We’re confident we’re going to win this.”

Dann said: “I would have rather it had been us gaining votes in Los Angeles County . . . but it (still) looks like it’s going to be very close.”

Dann added that additional court cases may be filed in other counties today. “If it’s close,” he said, “Arlo will exercise his rights to the full extent of the law.”

State Republican Party officials reacted with disdain toward Smith’s legal maneuverings.

“He ought to stop being a crybaby,” state GOP Chairman Frank Visco said at a Burbank press conference. “To spend public money on a redundant type of an activity . . . is ludicrous . . . and is stalling the process.”

Visco said the Republican Party--which mailed more than 6.5 million absentee ballot applications to GOP households--strictly cautioned its workers not to sign any absentee applications on behalf of voters.

“They’re taking some isolated situations and blowing so much smoke,” he said.

Countered Dann: “Look, if Visco had nothing to hide, he’d encourage the Orange County Board of Supervisors to tell the registrar to compare the (signatures). . . . Why they just won’t do that . . . I don’t understand.”

Dann said the Smith campaign received numerous reports of voters arriving at the polls to find that they had already been sent absentee ballots.

Tanney, however, said such incidents occur sporadically and this year is no exception.

Even if some absentee ballots were applied for illegally, the registrar said, ballots ultimately cast by voters to whom they were issued should be counted.

“The intent of the law is to encourage people to participate in the election,” Tanney said. “Why would you disenfranchise the voter who in good faith voted? . . . If I have a sealed ballot with the signature of the voter, as far as I am concerned that is a valid ballot and deserves to be counted.”