There are 186 people in this country who ultimately could select the Democratic presidential nominee.

Most of them do not know they'll soon wield such power. They will be picked by their state parties or by the party's national chairman to be on the Credentials Committee to the Democratic National Convention. It's normally a political reward, but this year the job could seem more like punishment. Four Georgians will be among the chosen.

(ENLARGE)

Andre Walker, a Democratic blogger, is concerned the tumult will carry over to the general campaign.

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If the dispute over what to do about Florida and Michigan — whose Democratic primary results have not been recognized by the party — is not settled by the time Democrats gather in August in Denver, the Credentials Committee will probably make the call on what to do about delegates from the rogue states, which defied the party by moving up their primary dates.

The committee could decide whether those delegates are seated at the convention, and to which candidate they are pledged.

The ultimate winner of the nomination could ride on the outcome.

That isn't good for the party, said one Georgian who has been to the past eight conventions.

"Any time you have a credentials fight, it weighs heavily on the members who have to sit in judgment," said Georgia state Rep. Calvin Smyre (D-Columbus), who has been a delegate to every Democratic Convention since 1980 and was on the Credentials Committee at the 1988 convention in Atlanta. "When you have these, it doesn't set a good tone for your convention; it clouds the environment. That's what we don't need, is anything that will cloud the convention."

Redo appears unlikely

Like almost everything else having anything to do with this nomination race, the situation is complicated. Its importance is huge, given that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama appears capable of winning the nomination outright.

Obama leads Clinton in the delegate race, 1,627 to 1,494. It takes 2,024 delegates to win.

Only 566 delegates remain among the states (and territories) left to vote. The more than 400 potential delegates in Florida and Michigan could put either Clinton or Obama over the top.

Clinton has supported new votes in both states, or for the earlier primaries to count. Obama has said his campaign will continue to follow DNC rules.

To avoid the prospect of a brokered convention, which many Democrats believe would splinter the party less than three months before the November general election, party leaders in Florida and Michigan have floated several plans for a revote. None has stuck. As of late last week, it did not appear that new votes would be held in either state.

In comes the Credentials Committee. The 186 Democrats that will form the committee will be chosen during the next several months. DNC Chairman Howard Dean appoints 25 of them, which he has already done.

The others are elected by the state parties, based on population. While Georgia gets four, California gets 17. Georgia's four will be chosen by the members of the convention delegation, which won't be finalized until the state convention in May.

If Florida or Michigan Democrats file a challenge to the DNC's decision to strip them of their delegates (a near certainty), the challenge will be heard by the Credentials Committee. The committee probably will meet in July and consider the challenge at that time. The committee would have great leeway to settle the dispute.

According to the DNC, the committee could:

• Uphold the sanctions and bar all the delegates;

• Allow all of them to be seated; or

• Create some kind of hybrid where half the delegates get to attend.

The committee could also decide how many of each state's delegates get awarded to which candidate.

Even then, it's not over.

On the first day of the convention, Aug. 25, the Credentials Committee presents its report to the seated convention delegates. The report, which will contain the decision on Florida and Michigan, must be approved by the delegates — including all the superdelegates.

'A bad taste'

This is unlikely to end well, said Andre Walker, 24, a College Park Democrat who supports Clinton and has applied to be a Georgia delegate from the 13th Congressional District.

"We've reached a point that whatever happens, the Hillary supporters and the Obama supporters are probably going to walk away with a bad taste in their mouths," said Walker, a prominent Democratic blogger who runs the Georgia Politics Unfiltered site (georgiaunfiltered.blogspot.com) and is a regular contributor to MyDD.com, a leading liberal site.

"If Michigan and Florida don't end up getting seated at the convention, Hillary supporters will be upset and say they should have counted," Walker said. "If they do, and she wins the nomination, the Obama supporters will be upset."

Walker said his biggest fear is that the tumult carries over to the general election campaign.

"What was supposed to be a slam-dunk election, a solid Democratic year, is no longer a given," he said.

If Walker wins a seat in Denver as a delegate, he said he would vote to seat the entire Florida and Michigan delegations. He said he also could support a compromise where the original DNC sanctions are applied: loss of half the delegations.

To prove that the politics of the presidential race has saturated this process, too, Walker said he'll do as told.

"Of course, the flip side is that, as a delegate pledged to Senator Clinton, I'm essentially going to vote whichever way she tells her delegates to vote," he said.

Search for bias

Supporters of both Clinton and Obama already are scouring Dean's list of the first 25 members looking for signs that it's stacked to favor one candidate over the other.

Much of the independent analysis seems to indicate that, instead, Dean named Democrats loyal to himself.

In addition to those appointees, Dean has named three co-chairmen for the committee, all with ties to the Clintons. Alexis Herman was Bill Clinton's secretary of labor. James Roosevelt Jr. was an associate commissioner at the Social Security Administration when Hillary Clinton was first lady. Eliseo Roques-Arroyo was a consultant for Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2000.

However the Credentials Committee decides, Richard Ray wants to see the process fixed before 2012.

Ray is president of the Georgia AFL-CIO and a member of the DNC and, therefore, a superdelegate to the convention. He remains uncommitted but would have a vote on the Credentials Committee report in Denver. How would he vote?

"I don't know how I would approach that rather than listen to both sides," Ray said. "But, to go back, if you change the rules now ... if you violate the rules and get away with it, why ever obey the rules?"

Smyre, a Clinton supporter who could be a delegate for the ninth time, said only one thing is clear in all this: Nothing is clear.

"This will be a convention like no other convention I've attended," Smyre said. "As far as this convention, the script has not been written."

HOW DELEGATE DISPUTE BEGAN

The Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee agreed in August 2006 to a primary calendar for the 2008 election year. It allowed Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina to hold the first four contests of the year, all before Feb. 5. Every other state was allowed to schedule primaries or caucuses for Feb. 5 or beyond.

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee created a similar calendar.

But those schedules did not sit well with other states that chafed under the notion that four states would — presumably — have outsized roles in choosing the nominees. Suddenly, there was a scrum among states to set primaries for Feb. 5.

But two big states, Florida and Michigan, went further. Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature adopted a measure setting Jan. 29 — the date the DNC gave to South Carolina — as the day the state would hold presidential primaries. In Michigan, the Democratic-controlled government set its primaries for Jan. 15.

Both the DNC and the RNC imposed sanctions on those states. Republicans in Florida and Michigan lost half their delegates. DNC rules said those states also would lose half their delegates, but then the Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to increase the sanctions to strip all the delegates from Florida and Michigan.

Sanctions or no, primaries were held in both states as scheduled. But the Democratic candidates all signed a pledge not to campaign in either state. In Michigan, only Hillary Clinton was on the ballot, as Barack Obama pulled his name from the slate.

Clinton won both states by wide margins.