Young Candidate Can Run, but He Can’t Vote : Elections: Though not yet 18 years old, the Chatsworth High senior hopes to win a seat on the L.A. Community College District board.

Josh Addison Arce will need a lot of votes to win a seat on the Los Angeles Community College District board, but there’s one vote he knows he won’t get next month.

His own.

That’s because Arce is not old enough to cast a ballot in April’s primary elections. The 17-year-old Chatsworth High School senior barely qualified to run for office, with his 18th birthday falling just three weeks before the general election on June 8--when he will be able to vote.

But that setback--not being able to vote--hasn’t dampened the hopes of Arce or of a group of dedicated high school friends who have spent the past two months raising funds, campaigning door to door, attending election forums and meeting with community college students.

“Students are being hurt by a lack of representation on the board, because they don’t have a voting member,” said Arce, a former academic decathlon competitor and captain of his high school football team last fall. “They have nobody looking out for them.”

Arce says all that will change if he unseats incumbent Patrick Owens. The Chatsworth teen-ager is running on a platform that includes restoring proposed budget cuts to the community college system and finding new sources of revenue to prevent future ones.

Arce is one of eight competitors, including Owens, vying for the Office No. 2 seat. The other candidates are Ronald R. Williams, a student majoring in business; Gabriel A. Orosco, a community activist; Elizabeth Garfield, a lawyer and college lecturer; Eric C. Jacobson, an editor at a downtown law firm; Maria Escalante, an educator; and Joseph Ortiz, an educator and communications specialist.

The seat is one of three up for election this year. Arce collected at least 500 signatures to qualify to run for one of the 4-year terms, which pay trustees $2,000 a month if they attend all meetings.

Inspired to become involved in government by his high school civics teacher, Ed Burke, Arce was a volunteer in Bill Clinton’s campaign for President and Hank Starr’s unsuccessful bid for the state Senate.

Seeking a seat for himself, says Arce, was a natural next step. It’s a challenge that Burke believes Arce is seriously embracing, despite his inability to raise much in the way of campaign funds.

“He’s a gifted student . . . very articulate and a leader,” said Burke, a current member and past chairman of the Los Angeles County Democratic Committee, which chose not to endorse a candidate in Arce’s race but singled out the teen-ager for recognition during a presentation.

Burke said the committee could not endorse Arce because he’s not old enough to register as a Democrat. “He’s in that odd situation,” Burke said. “He can run, but he’s not old enough to vote.”

The son of a Los Angeles police homicide detective and a wallpaper hanger, Arce says that he considers himself a Democrat, even though he grew up listening to the rhetoric of former President Ronald Reagan and former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, his father’s choices.

Indeed, he likes to spend free time reading about conspiracy theories surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination--eight books on the topic line a bedroom shelf. Nearly two dozen trophies acknowledging his skills in baseball and football sit nearby.

Whether he wins or loses, Arce does not plan to enroll in a community college himself but hopes to attend UCLA or USC, which have both accepted him.

If elected, Arce’s inexperience and his age could become his greatest obstacles, said Erica L. Hauck, the current student trustee, a non-voting adviser to the board.

“It might be hard for some people to look up to a 17-year-old with the respect that a trustee should have,” said Hauck, who said she favors the notion of a publicly elected student trustee.