Overseas ballots being cast by Pennsylvania soldiers and out-of-the-country civilians will be collected and counted through Nov. 10, an eight-day extension of what has historically been an Election Day deadline.

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But Republicans are vowing to fight for an even longer extension, saying the extra week-and-a-day won't give all absentee ballots enough time to make the trip from the Middle East.

The legal fight is a byproduct of the close race expected between President Bush and his challenger, Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry. Military votes tend to be Republican votes, and Republicans want to maximize their chances of securing Pennsylvania's trove of electoral votes.

Facing pressure from Republicans, Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell said yesterday morning that he would support a one-week extension of the collection deadline, now set by law for Tuesday's Election Day. By afternoon, the new Nov. 10 deadline was approved by U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane after closed-door negotiations between the state's counsel and GOP-financed lawyers.

Rendell says he's against a two-week extension because the extra time would make it difficult to challenge late-arriving ballots prior to a statewide recount, if a recount is necessary. Republicans say he's just trying to block Bush votes.

The agreement to a deadline extension was a reversal for the Rendell administration. In court last week, administration lawyers argued that the deadline shouldn't be extended because nearly all of the state's 67 county election bureaus had sent their absentee ballots overseas on time, and because an extension would burden already overworked election officials.

That court hearing, also in U.S. District Court, was prompted by a complaint filed by the U.S. Justice Department, which lost the case.

The department tried to prove that Pennsylvania's soldiers and expatriates were systemically disenfranchised because confusion over whether Ralph Nader would be placed on the state's certified ballot led to mailing delays. The GOP blames Democrats for the delays, because Democrats were behind the legal challenges to Nader's candidacy.

Nader has been stricken from the ballot.

The newest round of legal proceedings was prompted when a Republican-financed lawsuit was filed on behalf of two servicemen in Iraq and Kuwait.

That suit was filed Wednesday against Rendell and Pennsylvania's secretary of state, Pedro Cortes, and it sought a 15-day extension. Yesterday's Nov. 10 agreement marked the resolution of that case, but Republicans and military families are threatening additional suits.

A raft of Republicans, including both Pennsylvania senators, have been flaying Rendell since last week, saying the governor is minimizing the military vote. They said Rendell was preventing soldiers from voting, yet was trying to maximize votes cast by freed convicted felons, traditionally Democratic votes.

Rendell called those accusations hogwash, noting that one of plaintiffs lives in Venango County, where local records show that 131 of the 134 overseas ballots have been returned to the elections office.

In trying to make Democrats look unpatriotic, Republicans are "trying to make political capital out of it ... It's one of the worst things that's happening" across the country in the election-related bickering between parties, Rendell said.

Rendell said he met last week with U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican. The two discussed the deadline extension, and by Rendell's account, Santorum told him that the potential disenfranchisement was widespread because of the Nader delays.

"Five days later, we had no evidence of that," Rendell said. Of 26,000 overseas military and civilian voters who requested ballots, more than 16,000 have already been returned, and if response rate to the 2000 election is any indicator, more than 20,000 could be returned by Nov. 2.

The court's Nov. 10 deadline extension applies only to federal offices -- president and U.S. Congress -- but it's expected that Commonwealth Court will approve a similar deadline extension for state offices. Prior to all the legal maneuvering, yesterday -- Oct. 29 -- was supposed to be the deadline for receiving absentee ballots related to state offices, while absentee ballots for federal offices were to be counted through Nov. 2.

Despite the extension, overseas voters must still fill out their ballots and send them prior to Tuesday. If the postmark on a ballot reads Nov. 3 or later, the ballot will not be counted. The extension also does not apply to stateside absentee ballots.

Even as lawyers were hammering out an extension, Republican lawmakers mounted a cross-state offensive against Rendell, and were slow to praise the governor even after the extension settlement. "The Rendell administration has resisted this effort every inch of the way," state Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, said during a Harrisburg rally.

In Pittsburgh yesterday, Republican state legislators from Allegheny County's suburbs were joined by Santorum and Reps. Melissa Hart and Tim Murphy at a news conference outside the City-County Building, Downtown.

They joined the chorus.

"Two weeks isn't too much to ask," said state Sen. John Pippy, R-Moon, an Army Reserve captain who served in Iraq for eight months, returning in January.

The GOP gathering took the shape of a political rally for Bush, as dozens of supporters lined Grant Street with Bush-Cheney signs before they gathered in a semicircle behind the state and federal legislators.

The event was marred by two egg-tossing incidents, in which some of the Republican sign holders were struck in the legs with raw eggs, apparently thrown from somewhere on Grant Street. Santorum blamed Kerry supporters and said the incidents were an indication of the intensity of the race.

Serving as exhibit A for the Republicans yesterday in their argument for a two-week extension was Frank Bondy, an engineer whose 20-year-old daughter, Naomi, is in Baghdad with the Pennsylvania National Guard.

As of yesterday, the county elections office had mailed more than 2,200 ballots to voters in the military overseas, elections director Mark Wolosik said. Another 1,775 absentee ballots went to civilians overseas out of more than 40,000 absentee ballots mailed, he said.

Soldiers overseas who haven't received ballots yet can download ballots from the Internet, at www.fvap.gov, then mail them to the proper election bureau.