BALLOT COUNT WINDING DOWN; TRAUTMAN'S BID IN 25TH DISTRICT A LONG SHOT.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

Three weeks after Diane Trautman made a write-in bid for a congressional seat, election officials continue counting the ballots by hand - but the candidate has received only one-fourth the necessary votes.

As of Monday, the Los Angeles County Registrar's Office had tabulated 515 write-in votes for Trautman, a Saugus homemaker and PTA president challenging Rep. Howard ``Buck'' McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, in the 25th District race.

Grace Romero, a spokeswoman for the registrar, said the vote count should be finished this week, and next Tuesday the Registrar's Office will officially certify the results of the June 2 primary. Trautman will soon know whether she will be named the Democratic nominee.

For that designation, she had to receive at least 2,105 votes in the primary. That figure amounts to 1 percent of all ballots cast for the 25th District seat in the November 1996 election.

On Monday, Trautman was resigned that getting the vote minimum was a long shot at best. ``At this point, it doesn't look like it's going to happen,'' she said.

The results didn't completely surprise her, she said, considering feedback from supporters about conditions at their polling places.

``There were no working pens and pencils in the (voting) booths. (Voters) had to ask for them,'' said Trautman, 43. ``It would be nice if, somehow or another, we managed to pull it off.''

If she fails to qualify for the general election, Trautman said she will turn her efforts to grass roots to debate the election-year issues.

Romero said counting write-in votes is time-consuming in that each ballot with Trautman's name written on the envelope must be checked to make sure voters didn't also punch the number for McKeon's name.

``We make sure that they didn't vote for anybody who is on the ballot, because then that's considered an `overvote,' '' Romero said. Such overvotes are discarded.

The 25th District includes the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, plus part of the San Fernando Valley.

Trautman, a wife and mother of two, faced McKeon in the 1996 congressional election. Back then, Trautman declared her candidacy early enough for her name to be printed on the ballot, but she lost to the Republican incumbent anyway, by a margin of 62 percent to 33 percent. That year, McKeon outspent Trautman 8-to-1 in the campaign.

McKeon's re-election campaign had raised $286,222 as of May 13, the most recent data available from the Federal Election Commission, the regulatory agency that enforces campaign finance laws. Of that amount, the congressman's campaign had spent $192,707, said Ian Stirton, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based agency.

McKeon was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992. The 25th District has 302,000 registered voters, 46 percent of them Republicans and 38 percent Democrats, according to the county registrar.