An examination, county by county, of the overseas absentee ballots to be tallied in Florida late today suggests Vice-President Al Gore could face an uphill battle in capturing enough of those votes to overtake Texas Governor George W. Bush's current lead.
A Washington Post survey of 61 of Florida's 67 counties shows, as of late on Wednesday afternoon, approximately 1,780 overseas absentee votes have arrived in those county election offices since election day.
Political activists have speculated that these late foreign votes could help Mr Gore overcome Mr Bush's 300-vote advantage if they include many Democratic voters living in Israel, or help Mr Bush if they are primarily from military families.
But by looking at absentee ballots remaining to be counted in each county, and examining the breakdown of absentee votes already counted there, it appears Mr Bush may take the majority of these late overseas votes. According to this calculation, Mr Gore would get about 650 votes and Mr Bush about 960, a net gain of about 300 for Mr Bush.
There are a number of complicating factors in trying to project overseas votes.
Two days remain for foreign ballots, sent by November 7th, to arrive in the county election offices. And these late arrivers may vote differently from the ones who sent absentee ballots by election day.
There's also a legal complication. County officials say many of the envelopes containing these late overseas absentee ballots lack a postmark. The law requires a postmark or other documentation to prove a ballot was mailed no later than election day.
The other problem is that overseas voters were mailed two ballots each. Under state law, each county sends out an "advance" ballot 45 days before the election to make sure it gets there soon enough. But that ballot is created before all primary run-off elections are completed, so it may list multiple candidates for various races. Once those have been resolved, a "regular" ballot is sent.
Many overseas voters complete both ballots, thinking the first one had been lost or fearful that it didn't count. Before the absentees are counted, the voter's name is checked to make sure a ballot hasn't already been counted from that voter.
Some election offices will not check for those duplicates until today, so the number of overseas ballots counted might be less than officials have to hand.
Mr Gore's problem is that the counties he won most heavily have few outstanding absentee votes. Broward County, where Jewish voters helped give him a lead of more than 200,000 on November 7th, has only 80 pending absentees. By contrast, heavily military and pro-Bush counties such as those around Jacksonville and Pensacola have 163 and 203 respectively.