ABSENTEE VOTERS TO DECIDE OUTCOME IN FOUR CONTESTS.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera Daily News Staff Writer

At least four races in Los Angeles County were so close after Tuesday's vote count that the winners won't be known until thousands of outstanding absentee ballots are tallied - a process that could take three weeks, county officials said Wednesday.

Absentee ballots probably will decide the district attorney's race, where incumbent Gil Garcetti was leading by a slim margin of 6,836 votes against opponent John Lynch, according to semiofficial election returns released by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's Office.

In the 43rd Assembly District race in Glendale, Democrat Scott Wildman was leading by a mere 544 votes over GOP candidate John Geranios.

The Los Angeles Unified School District's $2.4 billion bond, Proposition BB, to pay for repairs and renovation of school buildings had garnered a 65.71 percent yes vote but needed 66.7 percent to reach the two-thirds majority required for passage.

Los Angeles city measure K, which seeks to raise $776 million in assessments for new park and recreation facilities, needs a simple majority of votes, but was running a tight race with 336,542 yes votes and 330,271 no votes as of Wednesday morning.

With approximately 190,000 absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted by the workers at the Registrar-Recorder's Office in Norwalk, officials said it was impossible to tell how the close races would turn out.

The deadline to finish counting is Nov. 23, with official results announced the week of Nov. 25, said Registrar-Recorder spokeswoman Grace Chavez. She said updates will be announced Friday and Tuesday.

In an age of information superhighways and rapidly conducted exit polls, the process of counting the absentee ballots may seem excruciatingly slow, but Registrar-Recorder officials said it's just the nature of the beast.

``We're working this weekend, on double shifts, but it's just tedious and time consuming,'' said Chavez.

The counting process includes verifying every absentee voter's signature by comparing it to voter registration signatures, opening the envelope, removing the ballot out of a secrecy envelope and then counting the votes.

Provisional ballot votes, which account for about 30,000 of the 190,000 votes to be counted, must also be individually researched and verified.

Provisional ballots are voted at the polls when a voter's registration is in question or when the Registrar-Recorders' records indicate the voter has already sent an absentee ballot.

``It's manual work and manual can only work so fast,'' said Chavez.

Absentee ballots have played increasingly significant roles in elections, according to political consultants.

``At one time it played a minor role, now they can play a major role,'' said political consultant Joe Cerrell, who has worked in professional politics since the late 1950s. ``I mean, we did political mailings for absentee voters back then but now it's a major production.''

According to the Registrar-Recorder's Office, the number of requests for absentee ballots has been consistently climbing: from about 465,000 in the 1992 presidential elections, to about 482,000 in the 1994 gubernatorial elections, to this year's 488,000 distributed absentee ballots.

County officials said they had counted 213,346 absentee ballots turned in before Election Day.

Early returns showed Lynch captured the majority of absentees already counted with 104,927 (54.61 percent) to Garcetti's 87,209 (45.38 percent).

Garcetti's handlers said they believe the incumbent will prevail if the absentee votes now being counted were not mailed in, but actually turned in at polling places.

Rick Taylor, Lynch's campaign manager, noted otherwise.

``I think the numbers will be very similar or close to the (absentee) numbers we saw election night.''

Wildman, also teetering on the brink of victory over Geranios, could lose his 544-vote lead if the uncounted absentee ballots mirror the already-counted absentee ballots. Geranios received 6,078 absentee votes (55.16 percent) while Wildman received 4,638 absentee votes (42.09 percent) based on the first bulletin released by the Registrar-Recorder's Office.

Measure K was behind after the early absentees were counted with 37,821 no votes (60.78 percent) to 24,402 yes votes (39.21 percent).

Based on the votes already counted, Proposition BB, the school bond, needs only 7,813 votes to attain a two-thirds majority. But newly counted absentees will add to the total, increasing the number of votes needed for victory.