In one week, a few thousand Florida Democrats will trudge to their local high school, union hall or community center to cast ballots in a Saturday morning election most voters will never hear about.
The vote will select the political junkies who get to go to the presidential nominating convention. Typically the process merits little excitement.
Not this year.
With the Democratic National Committee refusing to seat Florida delegates because of the state's out-of-bounds presidential primary, activists are threatening to go to the barricades to get into the August convention in Denver.
''If we have to take fire axes, we will,'' declared Kristin Wipior, a board member of the Democrats of South Dade, her fighting words echoing off the mellow walls of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Miami at a meeting this week.
About 180 people from Miami-Dade applied to be delegates this year, more than ever before. Nearly 1,000 applied statewide.
''I've never heard so many people talking about delegates before,'' said Bret Berlin, state committeeman for the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. ``It used to be a party insider thing, but this year the election is so close.''
The stalemate over the nomination has unleashed a new wave of anger over Florida Democrats. When the DNC decided to strip the state of delegates, Democrats consoled themselves with the expectation that the race would be decided by momentum, not math.
Then Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton started swapping victories and the race turned into a numbers game. Clinton clobbered Obama in Florida, but it didn't matter -- there, I said it -- because no delegates were at stake.
Now that Florida Democrats realize that their record turnout on Jan. 29 didn't affect the most competitive, history-making presidential race in decades, the bile is rising again in their throat.
Not a day goes by when I don't hear from an ordinary Democrat threatening to vote Republican or switch to independent. And if the so-called ''superdelegates'' -- about 800 members of Congress and the Democratic National Committee who can support whomever they like at the convention -- get to play tiebreaker, there may be hell to pay.
''A citizen's vote is not a unit of measurement to be used as a poker chip in a game of chicken between the DNC, the Florida Democratic Party or any other organization,'' wrote Daniel Menefee in an e-mail.
The Obama campaign, which has dismissed the vote it didn't win in Florida, knows it has ground to make up and is already talking about putting the battleground state on the top of its to-do list should he win the nomination.
In the meantime, let's lighten up, folks. We can work this out, pick a nominee, and let Florida join the party in Denver, right?
The best solution I've heard comes from New York-based freelance journalist Ryan Nerz, who has written a book about the competitive-eating circuit. He invited Obama and Clinton to Saturday's World Jalapeño Eating Championship in Laredo, Texas, with a winner-take-all prize of all the remaining pledged delegates and super delegates.
Asked for the campaigns' responses, Nerz quipped that Obama cited the Japanese competitive eater who has set records with hamburgers and bratwurst sausages: ``Bring it, Hillary. I've studied the tapes of Kobayashi.''
Perhaps voters would prefer rock, paper, scissors? Post your proposal for breaking the Democratic deadlock at The Miami Herald's Naked Politics blog at www.herald.com.
Beth Reinhard is the political writer for The Miami Herald.
