12:00 a.m., November 17, 2000: Deadline for Counting of Florida Absentee Ballots Arrives, Bush Gains Votes

The deadline of midnight November 17 for Florida to count and tally all overseas absentee ballots, under Florida Administrative Code, Chapter 1S-2.013, arrives. [Leip, 2008] A US News and World Report article indicates that the deadline is noon November 18, not midnight of November 17, though this indication is erroneous. Absentee ballots continue to trickle in and be counted throughout the day and into the evening. [US News and World Report, 12/13/2000; Authentic History, 7/31/2011] Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the co-chair of Florida’s Bush campaign team (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000 and After), issues an opinion—in conflict with Florida state law—saying that absentee ballots can be counted even if received by mail up to 10 days after November 17 as long as they were sent from outside the country and postmarked by Election Day. Rumors of large numbers of military absentee ballots, presumably favoring George W. Bush in number, and a large number of ballots from American Jews in Israel, presumably favoring Al Gore, have swirled for days among the media and in both campaigns. A 2004 article by Vanity Fair will speculate that Mac Stipanovich, Harris’s “handler” from the Bush campaign, made the decision to have Harris issue her opinion after deciding that the likelihood of Bush gaining votes from the military absentee ballots was higher than the speculative Gore bounce from the perhaps-mythical flurry of votes from Israel. [Vanity Fair, 10/2004] Bush gains 123 votes from the absentee ballots (see November 15-17, 2000).