How Can I Vote-Tamper? Let Me Count the Ways : Election: A former candidate warns that the process has few safeguards against fraud.

How important is it to you that your ballot is counted accurately? As a candidate for Los Angeles County supervisor in June, I learned a lot about how the system works. I learned we are not exercising common sense. Because there are no safeguards whatsoever on the ballot-counting procedure, abuses are possible. Here is how:

* By law, the signatures on applications for absentee ballots must be checked against the registration signatures. When the completed ballot is received from the voter by the registrar-recorder, the signature on the ballot must be checked. This is not done in Los Angeles. Anyone can apply for an absentee ballot in anyone else’s name. Should the real voter try to vote, he or she will not be permitted to because it will be listed that that person has applied for an absentee ballot.

* Poll watchers are seldom present. The political parties have not put any priority on providing watchers to make sure that there are no irregularities, such as candidates’ literature inside the polling place or even ballot substitution.

* The official personnel at the polls take the ballots out of the unsecured boxes at the end of the day and count them, with full access to duplicate ballot cards provided in case some are accidentally destroyed. They place the cards in a small cardboard box, seal it with red tape and send it to the regional center. The number on the ballot stub does not appear on the ballot, so there is no way to verify that the ballot is real. With elections often decided by 2% to 3%, it would not take much to change results.

* Sheriff’s deputies pick up the sealed ballot boxes and deliver them by helicopter or car to the registrar-recorder’s office. They are unobserved throughout the process except by others in the Sheriff’s Department. (The deputies are not neutral; their association endorses candidates.) Before you argue that they are above reproach, remember the Kolts Report.

* Poll watchers stay at the registrar-recorder’s office only until 2 or 3 a.m. on election night. Then the registrar-recorder has 21 days to count the ballots and certify the election. What a relief to know that fraud is not allowed while the registrar-recorder’s staff continues the count.

* The computer software used to count the ballots has been certified by the state after an audit by a Big Eight accounting firm. Although the federal government recommends that a copy of the software be placed “in escrow” with a neutral party, neither the state nor the county does this. The program is checked by running it before and after the actual count. This means that if a “worm” program with a timed “on” and “off” were placed in the program, it could miscount ballots by transferring a few thousand votes from Candidate A to Candidate B, then disappear. The total security consists of locking up the computer and software. This is stupid or naive, when we know teen-age hackers can get into Pentagon computers.

* In 10 polls checked in a recent partial recount, there were at least three more ballots counted than signatures in the sign-in book for each precinct; in one, there were 10 more. This is enough to change results in a close election.

President Reagan loved the Russian expression, “Trust, then verify.” That’s great, but what happened to guarding the hen house? There are foxes everywhere.