The Cambridge Neighborhood Committee on Vietnam, a local peace group, will seek a special election if its 'dove' resolution does not make the ballot in the Nov. 7 city election.

To call a special vote on its anti-Vietnam war statement, the CNCV must get 20% of the registered Cambridge electorate--about 10,000 names--to sign the resolution.

The new petition campaign would begin at the polls Nov. 7. 'We think we can collect the 10,000 signatures in one day,' Michael Walzer, CNCV co-chairman and associate professor of Government, said yesterday.

The special election would probably be scheduled to coincide with the Massachusetts Presidential primary in April, Walzer said.

There is 'still a chance," Walzer said, that the resolution calling for U.S. with-drawal from Vietnam will make the Nov. 7 ballot, depending on how quickly the courts rule on the legality of the petition.

The CNCV needed only 4000 signatures--8 per cent of Cambridge voters--to put the issue in the regular election. The group collected those names last August, but City Solicitor Andrew Trodden ruled their petition illegal because it dealt with matters beyond the sphere of Cambridge City government.

The CNCV is now fighting Trodden's ruling in Middlesex County Superior Court. Walzer is confident the courts will eventually uphold the petition. But the ruling will probably come too late for Nov. 7, according to CNCV lawyer Hans F. Loeser.

The petition for a special election--if it is necessary--will bear exactly the same text as the one now in court.