OLFAX, Iowa - On Monday, just after the workday ends, about a dozen people will trickle into the basement of the faded white First United Methodist Church here to have an argument.
Aluminum folding chairs will be set out. Maybe a pot of coffee. And for the next hour or so, a handful of people of this tiny, rugged town will talk to - and maybe yell at - one another. Then someone will make a phone call.
Hours later, the country will know who the winners of the Iowa caucuses are.
It is a political ritual that, to the rest of the world, matters only for its results. The Iowa caucuses are, after all, the first contest in the presidential election - a weird sort of near-primary that is discussed as if voters actually cast ballots at a booth.
To Al Flyr, a local Democratic official, the caucuses are about the process. It's like a school board meeting, he says. Or a block party. Or a kickball game.
''You'll see this many for Al Gore in that part of the room, this many for Bill Bradley on that side of the room,'' said Flyr, pointing to the corners of the basement room in which the caucus for Colfax, about 25 miles east of Des Moines,will take place. ''Then you'll try to talk about it, try to convince people from the other side to come to yours. It's really not like voting at all.''
Nor is it what it used to be. Despite the mythic status of the Iowa caucuses, attendance is low these days. Almost no one - just 25,000 out of 562,581 potential participants - turned up for the 1996 Democratic caucuses, in which when President Clinton ran unopposed. Election officials think this year might be better, but not by much.
That means it is up to the political enthusiasts to dominate the night, to prepare the caucus sites and phone in their results.
And getting ready they are.
Jill Flyr, Al Flyr's wife and the minister at the Methodist church in Colfax, is planning to give a sermon this Sunday on the importance of getting out on caucus night.
In nearby Kellogg, the fire chief, Mike Patterson, is figuring out how to move the trucks out of the station for the night to make room for the dozen or so people expected to turn up.
Hundreds of churches and schools, civic centers and coffee shops are setting out chairs and posting signs. Precinct officials are trying to find transportation for the elderly. Party leaders are scrutinizing the weather reports. If it snows, the rural two-lane roads leading to many sites could be blocked for hours.
Yet this is not a pessimistic part of the world. Particularly not around election time.
Take Republicans Johnny and Janice Coder, who live in Ames, Iowa, just north of the capital of Des Moines.
The Coders don't much go in for the caucus system, although they'll be hosting a Republican vote on Jan. 24.
''It's ingrained in Iowa tradition. But so few people participate,'' said Johnny Coder, 63. ''We're expecting 50 or 60 people. This counts out a lot of people whose jobs don't allow them to get out, and who would sooner go to a voting booth.''
To the Coders, the caucus system doesn't reflect the will of voters of Iowa, just that of ''the eager beavers'' like themselves.
''We love having political parties,'' said Johnny Coder, a corn and soybean farmer who was born in America and still speaks English with traces of his immigrant parents' Czech accents, and calls his wife ''mom.'' ''We love America and its future.''
The Coders have five children and 14 grandchildren, whose photographs fill the walls of their rambling house.
In among the snapshots of grinning children, there are grinning candidates: Governor George W. Bush and Steve Forbes, who both sent the Coders signed Christmas cards, proudly displayed on the fireplace beside their Bush and Forbes baseball caps.
The candidates have come courting because voters like the Coders carry a lot of weight in Iowa's 2,000-plus caucus precincts: only 96,451 of the state's 582,000 registered Republicans voted in the 1996 caucuses.
Here's how the process will work at the Coders' on Monday night. Dozens of voters will descend on their big brown farmhouse at about 7 p.m. They'll all sign in, then when everybody has arrived, supporters will have a couple of minutes to sway voters toward their favorite candidate.
Unlike the Democratic caucus in Colfax, voters at the Coders' house will cast ballots privately. Still, proceedings can get heated, the Coders said. But all of them vote with their hearts, even if that means disagreeing with gracious hosts.
''It's individualist,'' Johnny Coder says. ''We honor their dissension. That's what makes us stronger.''
In Colfax, Jill Flyr took an old, framed newspaper off the wall of the Sunday school room last week.
In 1924, when Calvin Coolidge was re-elected to the White House, every eligible voter in the church congregation showed up at the polls - a feat so remarkable that it made the front page of the New York Christian Herald.
Back then, people voted - in booths. The caucus system did not take effect until the late 1960s, when Iowa officials were searching for a way to engage voters turned off by the political disenchantment of the age. Now, disenchantment seems to have taken hold again. But the Flyrs hope that, like the young faces that stream into their church every Sunday, the political process might appeal to a younger crowd, if it's pitched the right way.
''I am going to talk about it next Sunday, how important it is to get involved in the political process. Maybe I'll even talk about the newspaper article,'' Flyr said. ''If we don't go out and vote, big money is going to take over. I feel this as an American, and I feel this as a Christian.''
The basement of the 86-year-old church building is sparse, but that should have little bearing on the Democrats who gather Monday night. They will arrive around 7 p.m., most of them elderly, most traveling by car. And there won't be many strangers in their midst.
The 2,300 residents of Colfax are a cohesive bunch - many, if not most have known one another for decades. Many are descendants of the settlers who established the town in 1866, or the coal miners who began moving here in 1882. They vote largely Democratic, but most say they are Independent - in spirit if not in the registry.
Unlike the airwaves or the polls, the caucus is ''not dominated by any one candidate.''
''It's a really open process,'' he said. ''People are encouraged to speak their minds.''
