All That Counts Is an Honest Count : Absentee ballot snafu in Orange County clouds attorney general result.

The absentee ballot has joined big money and television as a formidable weapon in California politics. The secretary of state’s office estimates that 20% of voting in the recent election, an all-time high, was done by mail. It wasn’t by accident. Both major parties, especially the Republicans through a statewide campaign, mobilized absentee voters.

But what has happened this time in Orange County, long a bastion of Republican strength, illustrates that the system of verifying absentee ballot signatures is too loosely supervised and too open to manipulation, especially in a close election.

A superior court judge last weekend took the unusual step of halting the absentee count, pending a hearing scheduled for Friday. Democrat Arlo Smith, locked in a bitterly contested and close race for state attorney general with Republican Dan Lungren, challenged the tabulating methods of the registrar of voters on the grounds that nobody was checking the authenticity of signatures on absentee ballot applications.

The secretary of state’s office permits registrars either to verify ballot signatures against original affidavits of registration or against the applications for ballots. Orange County’s method of checking against original registration is typical of big counties. But the Smith camp has charged that GOP workers may have submitted applications illegally by forging signatures for real voters.

If that had happened, a registrar’s office like Orange County’s, which does not check signatures on applications, would never catch meddling partisans. If the system is to have integrity, campaign workers should not be the equivalent of travel agents for voters. Absentee voters should submit their own applications.

Another problem, evident in Los Angeles County, must be resolved as the absentee ballot sweepstakes grow. There the number of absentee ballots received was huge--actually exceeding the total vote in some states. But nearly 13,000 were invalidated--even though some bore local postmarks as early as Nov. 1 or 2. It seems that the state Election Code says the delivery time, not the postmark, is what matters for a vote to count. Change the law so that the postmark, not the date received, counts.

As more people vote by absentee ballot, and as campaigns gear up to attract those voters, the Legislature must ensure that: 1) Absentee voters submit their own applications; 2) ballots submitted on time are not discounted because the mail carrier is running late.