EST PALM BEACH - Meet the most important group of people in America today.
They have names like Mort and Sidney, Gert and Beverly. They like nothing more than to talk about what ails them (''For gawd sakes, take a look at these bunions.'') Their dinner hour falls just after lunch. And they think nothing of leaving their left blinker flashing during the entire ride back to their condos. And that turn signal might be the only sign of life inside the car.
But here's the rub. They alone, it seems, have elected the next president of the United States. And now the rest of the nation will have to live with their choice, as soon as we figure out what it is.
For nearly two years now, the candidates for the White House have hurtled across our great continent in search of electoral support. They have dined with farmers along the golden, glorious plains, breathed deep the fresh Pacific air, hustled across deserts in the Southwest, clomped through snow in New England, and gazed up from the canyon-like streets of midtown Manhattan.
And after all that, after all those hundreds of thousands of man hours, after all those tens of millions of dollars in television ads, it comes down to this: A questionable, even controversial, vote count that will be determined today in what is arguably America's most dysfunctional state.
Dysfunctional? For starters, the average voter here harks back fondly to the Roosevelt Administration - Teddy's, not Franklin's. They sit in clique-y clusters around their communal swimming pools trading war stories from their most recent doctor's visits. Talk in a normal tone of voice, and they'll contort their face and screech, ''Huh? What's he saying, Mother?'' - before you can even complete a sentence.
And those who aren't old are just plain violent, so much so that Florida ranks number one in the country in violent crime. Perhaps it's the humidity, or those canals and ponds that claim a body every other week.
It is by far the state with the largest number of old people and the smallest number of people under 18, according to the Census Bureau. It ranks high in motor vehicle deaths, and extraordinarily low in energy consumption (''Shut that damned air conditioner off, Morty. I'm freezing!'')
Down Route 95, in Miami, the locals canonized a young and unfortunate boy who had just lost his mother on the high seas, perhaps ruining him for life, all in pursuit of fame and anti-Cuban glory. In the Keys, society's outcasts howl at the moon for fun. Up in the Panhandle, outsized men in tank tops and rattails guzzle Super Big Gulps from their local 7-11 and end every attempt at a sentence with the declaration, ''Fer sure.''
But all in all, it is their public officials who may be the very worst. You think Boston is a tough political town, or Chicago? Welcome to Miami, where the results of the last mayoral campaign were actually reversed by a federal judge because of vote fraud. Yes, vote fraud - people messing around with ballots, which is something to keep in mind as the counting comes to an end later today.
In that 1997 race, dead people were voting in droves for Xavier Suarez, who was elected mayor, and Humberto Hernandez, who was elected a city commissioner.
The Miami Herald, in a prize-winning expose, reported that campaign workers registered people to vote at addresses where they didn't live, punched absentee ballots without permission, and cast ballots in the names of people who later insisted they did not vote. One of the workers charged was a 92-year-old retired produce vendor who claimed to witness a ballot for a voter who had an unfortunate medical condition known as death.
Only in Florida. God's waiting room, some are known to call it. By tomorrow, it might be the mortuary for Al Gore's or George W. Bush's career.
Brian McGrory's e - mail address is mcgrory@globe.com
