Easy voting: calling Jimmy Carter.

'VOTER fraud!" It is the departing cry of losing candidates -- the most recent, and loudest, being former Rep. Bob Dornan. As in the past, B-1 Bob flew into his Orange County district a few weeks before the election, expecting to pull out another victory. But his barnstorming technique ended with a crash and burn in '96, and he is left only with complaints of voter fraud to generate media coverage.

A less publicized but perhaps more serious case involved Judge Linda Wilde -- the right candidate, Republicans hoped, to oust 34-year incumbent Rep. George Brown. Wilde lost this San Bernardino race by less than 900 votes, amid charges of highly peculiar anomalies in the vote tallies, "lost" ballots, and prejudicial --perhaps illegal -- treatment by the County Registrar's Office. Congress is taking the matter seriously: Brown's victory has been certified by the Registrar and the California Secretary of State, all but guaranteeing that the results will stand. Nevertheless, the House Oversight Committee has taken the unusual step of sending a staff attorney to investigate.

Congressional Republicans can absorb these losses, but the implications of fraudulent voting are considerably greater at the state level. In 1996, Republicans lost the narrow majority in the State Assembly they had won two years previously. The Democrats' current 43-37 advantage, however, rests on less than 3,000 votes statewide -- a fraction of a per cent of the ten-million-plus votes cast. Even minimal voter fraud could have made the difference. And by any honest analysis of California's election process, its voting-fraud problem is more than minimal.

California is the rotten borough of electoral politics, where stunningly lax standards are an open invitation to abuse. By law, only adult, non-felon citizens are qualified to vote. But little or nothing is done to enforce these restrictions on the franchise. In 1994, for example, a minor scandal erupted when it was discovered that the assassin of a Mexican presidential candidate had twice registered to vote in Los Angeles County. Yet no substantial changes in the registration process were made. Estimates are that voter fraud, along with "deadwood" -- names of those who have died or moved but are still on the rolls -- result in as many as three-and-a-half million improper registrations in California, amounting to more than 20 per cent of the total.

Liberals demand a mile-long paper trail for anyone buying a gun, but nary an inch for voters. In the months before an election, every supermarket and shopping mall has a card table, manned by party volunteers, where passers-by can register. No identification is required: no proof of age, or of residency in the state, or even of American citizenship. The form requires a legal, in-state address, but no evidence that one actually lives there. It requires a signature, under penalty of perjury, that the registrant meets the legal conditions for voting. Once this is signed, the road to voting is mostly assured. After the incident of the civic-minded Mexican assassin, then-L.A. County Registrar Beatriz Valdez admitted, "Voter registration forms are based on an honor system, and beyond the address of the applicant, very little of the information on them is double-checked."

THE Democratic majority leader of the State Senate, Bill Lockyer, reportedly paid professional registration workers as much ten dollars a head for every new Democrat voter they signed up in the recent election cycle. This is technically legal, but little prevents such "bounty hunters" from registering criminals, foreigners, minors, or dead people, or from submitting multiple registrations of the same person, with slight variations on the name. And because registration lists are kept at the county level, with no statewide database, it is easy for one person to be registered, and vote, at several addresses.

Attempts to purge the voting rolls of illegal registrants meet not only especially high legal standards of proof -- "clear and convincing evidence" -- but also a barrage of bureaucratic obstacles, privacy claims, and the constant threat of an activist judge declaring that such investigations amount to civil-rights violations. Moreover, in the aftermath of Proposition 187 -- the 1994 ballot initiative that eliminated social-welfare benefits for illegal aliens -- many would-be reformers seem intimidated by the threat of charges of racism. And there is no doubt that a public anti-fraud campaign, which would among other things seek effectively to prohibit voting by non-citizens, would generate a violent reaction by liberal interest groups and the media.

The recent success of Proposition 209, however, should hearten reformers with the knowledge that right and common sense can prevail, even in the face of nasty and organized opposition. Without targeting specific groups, they should begin by pushing to eliminate the registration databases of the separate counties, and to re-register all eligible voters into a statewide system --requiring a drivers license or other valid form of ID.

In addition, the state's absentee-ballot program ought to be amended. Since 1976, as a "convenience" to combat low turnout, absentee ballots have been sent to any registered voter who requests one. No formal application or explanation is required. In fact, "absentee" is a misnomer, since these ballots can be hand-delivered to the local polling place on election day -- needlessly circumventing the checkpoint of having each voter state his name and confirm his address with poll workers.

Having observed ballot-counting at the L.A. County Registrar's Office last November, I was shocked at the lackadaisical manner in which ballots are examined, verified, and tabulated. I had expected them to be handled like money in a bank; it was more like watching bulk mail being moved through a post office. I saw workers opening the envelopes containing special ballots sent in from the various polling places. Some contained as many as sixty or seventy hand-delivered absentee ballots -- more than 10 per cent of all the voters in the precinct. Five to ten such ballots in a precinct is normal, but the workers did not raise an eyebrow, let alone an alarm.

What is most disturbing about those who dismiss the problem of voter fraud in California is their frivolous attitude about the meaning of citizenship. Those who want to tighten the election process can deflect charges of racism by reminding their critics and the people that the exclusion from voting of minors and felons -- and of non-citizens -- derives from an understanding of citizenship in which rights are grounded in responsibilities. The eagerness to broaden the franchise -- whether by being less than scrupulous about who votes, or by making voting more "convenient" to the detriment of electoral integrity -- debases the idea that voting must be responsible.

WE limit the right to vote for the same reason we cherish it. Children, criminals, and aliens are excluded because we believe the right to vote should entail a maturity of judgment, based on having a stake in the community. An important aspect of this maturity is that voters will look to their shared interest in the public good, and not just what they can get from the government. Without this maturity, voting ceases to be an exercise in self-government.

Currently, California's election procedures are designed to make registration and voting easy, not honest. The legal presumption favors the availability of the franchise over the fairness and integrity of the election. Given that fact, along with a government that redistributes massive amounts of money and legislative majorities that can be determined by small fractions of the overall vote, the ingredients for profound subversion of elections are all present: motive, means, and opportunity.

Perhaps in 1998, Jimmy Carter should lead one of his famous election observation teams to the Golden State, as if it were a third-world country, inexperienced in the ways of democracy. What would be far better is to reform the state's registration and election processes sensibly, in a way to ensure that adult, non-felon citizens who reside in the state have the opportunity to vote -- once.

Who could openly oppose such reforms? The sad truth is, many will. All the more reason to make haste.