Lungren, Smith Race Nearing a Dead Heat : Attorney general: The Smith campaign moved to expand its lawsuit over absentee ballot tabulations.

Republican Dan Lungren on Tuesday pulled into a virtual tie with Democratic foe Arlo Smith in the bitterly contested race for state attorney general as election officials across the state tallied the bulk of absentee ballots counted since last week’s state election.

Figures released late Tuesday afternoon by the secretary of state’s office showed Smith ahead by 1,077 votes statewide--out of more than 7 million votes cast.

Meanwhile, in an effort to blunt the Lungren surge, the Smith campaign moved to expand its lawsuit over the Orange County registrar of voters’ absentee ballot tabulations to include counties up and down the state.

Marc Dann, Smith’s campaign manager, said attorneys were preparing to file a new suit against Secretary of State March Fong Eu, demanding that absentee votes be invalidated in counties where the registrars’ offices did not compare the signatures on absentee ballot applications with those on voters’ affidavits of registration.

If successful, Dann said, the suit could void the tabulation of absentee ballots in counties including Orange, San Diego and Los Angeles, where Lungren has made significant gains.

A hearing on the initial lawsuit against Orange County, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, was pushed back to Friday after attorneys for the county requested more time to prepare written arguments supporting their position.

At issue is Smith’s contention that three signatures must be verified and matched before absentee ballots are counted: one from the original affidavit of registration, another from the application for an absentee ballot and a third from the absentee ballot envelope itself.

Orange County and most other large counties in the state check only the latter two signatures, reasoning that a ballot signed and cast by a registered voter is valid and should be counted.

By not checking the signature on the application against the affidavit of registration, Smith’s campaign charges, the possibility exists that Republican campaign workers could have fraudulently obtained absentee ballots for GOP voters, thus adding to their candidates’ vote totals.

“We’re not alleging fraud, but we want these guys to check,” Dann said. “I think the Republican Party is hiding something, and we won’t know until we look.”

While a section of the state elections code does say that the application signature also “must” be checked before the ballot is counted, county registrars and state officials argue that other sections override that provision and call for a broader interpretation that would not unnecessarily disenfranchise voters.

“They want us to discount that ballot, and that’s a pretty heavy penalty to voters,” said Orange County Registrar of Voters Donald F. Tanney.

Melissa Warren, spokeswoman for the secretary of state office, said guidelines for county registrars tell them that they do not need to verify the ballot application signature.

“The signature on the ballot needs to be verified,” she said. “That’s where you need to know if the person who cast the vote is the one who was registered.”

Dann disagreed. “I don’t care if the secretary of state stands on her head and spits nickels . . . ,” he said. “There are only two protections against fraud. One is a verifiable signature on the application, the other one is a signature on the ballot. I don’t think it’s in the discretion of the secretary of state or county registrars to decide to ignore one of them.”

While Smith’s campaign has only suggested that Republicans may have fraudulently obtained absentee ballots for their supporters, Tanney said he has encountered just two confirmed instances in Orange County this year where absentee ballot applications were signed by someone other than the intended voter--and both involved registration workers for a Democratic group.

In one case, a husband signed an application for his wife, and in another, a sister signed for her brother. The workers who had processed the applications were fired and the cases were turned over to the district attorney’s office, but no charges were filed.

“I don’t see any evidence of this being a major thing in the county,” Tanney said.

The reason for the Smith campaign’s concern over the validity of the absentee ballots became more evident late Tuesday afternoon, when the secretary of state’s office released the latest tallies.

Smith had led Lungren by 28,836 votes on election night. But Lungren has slowly but steadily chipped into Smith’s lead as absentee ballots, which traditionally tilt toward Republicans, have been counted across the state.

Lungren’s major surge came at 4:30 p.m. when the San Diego County registrar of voters office released figures showing that the former five-term congressman had picked up 16,587 votes in that county.

“It looks like it’s going our way,” said Lungren campaign manager Dave Puglia late Tuesday.

Lungren is expected to gain additional ground in Los Angeles County--where he already picked up 5,904 votes on Smith in the first batch of 77,000 absentee ballots counted--when another 50,000 absentees are counted later this week. Lungren also anticipates winning more absentee votes than Smith in Ventura and Orange where more than 65,000 ballots are still out.

“It’s another day at the office,” Dann said somberly late Tuesday. “We could still win on the votes. I won’t concede that.”

New county-by-county absentee ballot counts released Tuesday morning and early afternoon split almost evenly between Smith and Lungren.

Smith picked up between 1,100 and 3,900 votes on Lungren in each of four Bay Area counties--San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara. Lungren, meanwhile, increased his spread over Smith by 1,600 to 2,500 votes in counties including Santa Barbara, Kern, San Bernardino, Sacramento and Fresno.

Lungren’s most sizable boost early in the day came from Riverside County, where he picked up 5,703 votes on Smith.

Lungren’s massive pickup in San Diego was not all together unexpected since on Election Day, the Long Beach native had walloped his Northern California opponent there by a count of 299,579 votes to Smith’s 221,707.

Times staff writers Dave Lesher and Carl Ingram contributed to this story.