ANFORD, Fla. - The presidency could hinge on an overheard conversation.
In one of the stranger twists in an already made-for-TV election, the lawsuit that seeks to throw out 15,000 absentee ballots began with a casual conversation among election workers in heavily Republican Seminole County.
Near enough to overhear was a wealthy personal-injury lawyer who had volunteered to observe the county's ballot recount.
A worker happened to mention that Republicans had added missing information to thousands of applications for absentee ballots - and suddenly the Democrats had another claim of impropriety to pursue in court.
Ten days after the election, the lawyer, an activist Democrat, filed suit, charging that the Republican Party had been allowed to tamper with the requests.
Now, like Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties before it, Seminole County finds itself in the uncomfortable position of possibly determining the presidency.
Because no one can tell which ballot applications the Republicans completed and which they did not, Jacobs wants all of them invalidated. That would give Vice President Al Gore a decisive win in Florida over Texas Governor George W. Bush, who would see his 536-vote lead swallowed once and for all.
''We knew that was a possibility,'' said Richard Siwica, an Orlando lawyer who is part of Jacobs's legal team. ''But no matter how the other side wants to paint it, Republican operatives took public records and altered them. The issue for the judge is what the remedy is going to be.''
A trial date has been set for next Wednesday in Tallahassee, where the case was transferred after a circuit court judge in Sanford recused herself after conceding a conflict.
In yet another of the election oddities that will forever be identified with Florida, Judge Debra Nelson said during a Monday hearing that a campaign worker had completed about 3,000 absentee ballot applications at her behest during her last judicial race.
Gore is staying out of the Seminole suit, at least publicly, while concentrating on today's hearing before the US Supreme Court and his own suit contesting election returns in three Florida Counties. Gore has repeatedly emphasized the need to tabulate every vote, whether its chad was dimpled, pregnant, or punched.
Republicans at every level - local, state, and federal - dismiss as meritless Jacobs's charge that Seminole's elections supervisor was in cahoots with them.
At a Tallahassee news conference yesterday, Bush campaign attorney George Terwilliger called the suit ''much ado about nothing.''
But Republicans' concern is clear. They unsuccessfully tried to have Jacobs's suit dismissed and consolidated into Gore's other legal actions.
The party had lawyers at Monday's hearing in Sanford, located halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach, and once known as the celery capital of the world. They are preparing a defense.
''There's as much chance that a judge would say there should be a new vote in Palm Beach County as there is that a judge would throw all the absentee ballots out,'' said Ray Valdez, vice chairman of the Seminole County GOP and Bush's county campaign chairman. ''The irony is that the supervisor of elections was walking such a fair line.''
As Republicans explain it, the entire controversy comes down to unintended printer error.
Before elections, both parties routinely send voters temporarily living overseas or out of state forms to request absentee ballots. But the Republican request forms lacked the necessary voter identification number.
Valdez said party officials asked elections supervisor Sandra Goard if they could remove about 4,700 ballot requests from her office to complete them. She said no.
They asked to use her computers. She said no. As a compromise, Valdez said, she did allow two Republican workers to sit in her office, correcting the applications using their own laptop computers and a purchased list of voters.
The Democrats had no problems with the applications that were returned from their mailing, and they were processed as usual. No one has suggested that the 10,000 other absentee ballots are not in compliance with Florida's tough election laws
''She didn't contact the Republicans; they contacted her,'' said Thomas Johnson, an attorney for the Seminole County Canvassing Board who is helping represent Goard.
''She didn't have the clerical staff to fill in the numbers and she didn't want to waive the voters' rights altogether.''
Goard, a Democrat turned Republican who was easily returned to office in the Nov. 7 election, was only following standard procedure, according to Randall Morris, vice chairman of the Seminole County Board of Commissioners. Elections supervisors across Florida do it all the time, he added - an excuse Democrats call both implausible and inaccurate.
Representatives on both sides seem surprised that the suit has lasted this long. Still, each one predicts victory. Legal scholars, too, are divided over the legality of Goard's actions, as well as the likelihood that the judge will nullify every absentee ballot.
Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, called the handling of the ballots a ''technical violation,'' but doubted any judge would provide the remedy Jacobs is seeking, and Gore may be relying on, by Dec. 6.
''There would be a humongous outcry,'' Jewett said. ''Then again, I didn't think they'd even get a court hearing. It's the wild card in the election.''
Robert Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern Law School in Fort Lauderdale, gave Jacobs better odds, depending on the underpinnings of his case. But if Goard can show she would have allowed Democratic absentee voters the same assistance had they needed it, his case will weaken.
Among the people who live and work in Sanford, the seat of a county that boasts it has the country's largest flea market under one roof, talk is of when the entire controversy will fall away. As one voter put it, she doesn't like the county of 350,000 or so being identified with ''Flori-duh.''
