ORTH MIAMI BEACH - In the halls of synagogues amid this lush strip of art-deco high rises, there is concern that the Lieberman Factor may not be all it's cracked up to be when it comes to the crucial weekend tally of overseas absentee votes.
And, while Republicans continue to have high hopes, there are also doubts whether absentee votes by military personnel stationed overseas will flow as heavily to George W. Bush as his campaign had assumed.
With Bush's lead in Florida down to 300 votes, Democrats here, while still pursuing court battles on several fronts, are pinning much of their hope on the estimated 4,000 Florida Jews in Israel, a mixed group of young and old whom Democrats are counting on to send absentee ballots in record numbers - and to vote for Al Gore and Joseph I. Lieberman.
An informal survey here of synagogues and Jewish groups did find optimism that Lieberman's presence could have made the needed difference.
But that was tempered by concern that many conservative US Jews, who are in Israel for religious education, have harsh feelings about the Clinton-Gore administration's handling of the recent violence in the Middle East, and that they may refrain from supporting the Gore ticket.
''Israel is a bigger issue than Joe Lieberman for them. Al Gore's liberalism and his position on the Palestinians have made some people, especially the younger ones, nervous,'' said Rabbi Berish Braun of the Miami Beach Community Kollel, a synagogue that serves about 100 Orthodox Jewish families.
Florida officials are expected to count overseas ballots on Saturday morning and to announce the result of the state's presidential vote that afternoon.
No figure was available on the number of overseas ballots from Israel that have been received by election officials. But as of Monday, only 447 votes from overseas military personnel had been processed through the central postal facility for military mail here.
That number has surely grown since then. But the Bush team, is banking on a history of Florida's overseas vote going Republican, largely because of the military vote.
In 1996, 54 percent of the overseas count went to the Republican candidate, Bob Dole, over President Clinton. But that race involved a World War II hero against one who had avoided military service, both Republican and Democratic officials said here.
This year, they said, the military vote, though still likely to favor Bush, could be more favorable for Gore, given that he volunteered during the Vietnam War while the Bush remained at home as a Texas Air National Guard pilot. Also, the military ranks are heavily minority, and minorities voted Democratic by wide margins this year.
About 1,400 overseas ballots are sitting in 67 county courthouses here, waiting to be counted after the deadline. More are expected to arrive in the next two days. In previous election years, this batch of ballots would have amounted to an after-the-fact footnote.
Election officials in each county have been receiving these late absentee ballots from residents abroad since Nov. 8. The military ballots arrive at the Air Mail Center near the airport here, and are farmed out to the appropriate counties. The deadline for these ballots is midnight Friday, though in practical terms this means the last delivery of mail on Friday.
The ballots will be counted by county elections officials. Each county elections supervisor has determined a specific method of counting. Most counties have fewer than 100 overseas absentee ballots; some counties have fewer than 10.
The process does involve some judgment calls by county officials. All absentee ballots must have the proper Social Security number, address and registration number, according to Florida law. But with only a Social Security number, county officials can look up all the other information for a voter and print it on a ballot. Or they can disqualify it. It is up to them.
The heart of the military vote is Escambia County, at the tip of the Florida panahandle and home to a big US Navy base in Pensacola. In the 1996 presidential election, 238 votes were cast from abroad in Escambia County, according to county officials. This year the number is slightly lower, with 196 ballots waiting to be counted.
''It's mostly people from the Navy,'' said Jean King, assistant to Escambia County's supervisor of elections.
To counterbalance the military absentee vote, and the possibility that it might tilt toward the Republicans, local Democrats had tried to use Lieberman to boost the absentee turnout of American Jews in Israel. They took out ads in major Israeli newspapers urging US Jews to send in their ballots. And they made a similar push at colleges there.
The Jewish strongholds in Florida are Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. All three went comfortably into Gore's column.
Many of the US Jews who sent in ballots from Israel are thought to be from these three counties. But the profile of those who requested the ballots is unknown. Jewish leaders interviewed said they are probably a combination of younger religious students and retirees who winter in Florida but otherwise live in Israel.
In the election this year, 79 percent of American Jews voted for Gore, according to exit polls. That trend held in Florida. And Gore hopes it will hold, and perhaps will even be exceeded, in this weekend's overseas absentee count.
Rabbi Eddie Levy of Miami predicted this will come to pass.
''Everybody tells me they are so proud that Gore selected Lieberman,'' he said.
Levy runs a uniquely Miami Jewish group, Jewish Solidarity, which does outreach to Cuba. In fact, he is leaving for Cuba today. But he said he will keep one eye closely on this weekend's outcome. ''Without question they will be Gore supporters, even more so with Lieberman. Jewish people generally vote Democrat,'' Levy said.
Many of the Jewish retiree voters lean toward Gore for reasons having nothing to do with ethnicity or US foreign policy, Jewish leaders here said.
''You have a lot of retirees, and I will tell you that Social Security is a big issue for them, and most support the Gore-Lieberman plan,'' said Stephen Bascove, director of Israel of Greater Miami. But of the younger voters, which he said make up a chunk of the overseas vote, Bascove said: ''The younger folks are more evenly split.''
