Florida Democrats face another vote-counting quandary they can blame on Republicans: whether to stage their first presidential caucus in modern history.

The caucus could lure primary candidates to the state and nurture Democratic grass-roots organizations and fundraising. But staging an alternative contest to the traditional primary could cost the party millions of dollars as well as its credibility, after years of vowing to make every vote count.

The Democratic dilemma was triggered by the GOP-led Legislature's decision to make the presidential primary one of the earliest in the country on Jan. 29. The move defied national party rules governing the primary calendar. Scofflaw states lose half of their delegates to the nominating conventions.

It gets worse for Democratic presidential candidates, who can't earn a single delegate in rule-breaking states, even if they win the most votes.

Here are the options facing the state party:

* Hold a post-Feb. 5 caucus, in which activists around the state would gather to pick their favorite candidate. Top winners would split the full slate of convention delegates.

* Accept the Jan. 29 primary date, even if its results won't matter at the convention.

* Beg the national party to bend the rule that only four states -- New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada -- can vote before Feb. 5.

Each option has pros and cons, supporters and detractors, whose opinions often hinge on the effect on their favored candidate. Compounding the dilemma: Some party leaders say the delegate count is irrelevant, since a nominee often emerges long before the convention rolls around in early fall.

That's the argument made by Republican leaders, who predict that even a delegate-thin Florida primary would propel the winner through the two dozen Feb. 5 primaries and onto the nomination.

"We had a bunch of folks who were invited to a party and got to see balloons dropped, " said House Speaker Marco Rubio, taking his pitch national last week on PBS. "Now, candidates are going to have to come to Florida and answer questions that are important to Floridians, and by the way, important to Americans."

Then again, Republican contenders may decide to ration their time and money in Florida because it will have only as many delegates as Indiana. Democratic candidates may decide to forgo a state with 10 costly media markets but fewer delegates than Rhode Island.

"In Florida, we tend to think they can't ignore us, " said Tallahassee attorney Allan Katz, one of Florida's 11 members of the Democratic National Committee. "But there is a recipe out there in which it could happen."

The state party faces a June 1 deadline to make a decision about holding a caucus, but negotiations between state and national officials may drag into the summer.

The chaos ensues just as the state takes another crack at getting elections right. New legislation requires counties to ditch the flawed touch-screen machines that replaced the flawed punch-card ballots.

Still, the 2008 presidential primary could turn as wacky as hanging chads. Imagine: Hillary Clinton campaigns in Florida, wins the Jan. 29 primary, but gets no convention delegates -- but they go to an also-ran because he never set foot in the state.

Or: Clinton wins the Jan. 29 primary but loses the caucus to Barack Obama. He wins more delegates, a pivotal tipping of the scales in the first race since 1928 without a sitting president or vice president running.

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