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But in a year that has seen a much lower level of organizing than usual, not a single campaign has announced chairpersons in all 99 counties. Bachmann seems to have come the closest, as her campaign announced earlier this month that she has 91 counties covered.

Mitt Romney’s campaign will not say how many county chairpersons it has in place, though the remnants of the extensive organizing Romney did in the state throughout 2007 may prove invaluable.

At his Ida County precinct in 1996, Iowa GOP campaign veteran Tim Albrecht delivered his first caucus night speech on behalf of Pat Buchanan -- while just a high school senior. According to Albrecht, the visual stimuli at each site can have a significant last-minute impact.

“You want to plaster that room with your signs and plaster anyone who will wear one with a sticker, because people like to go with a winner when they are undecided this late,” he said.

The candidates themselves will usually speak on their own behalf at one or two precincts in the more heavily populated counties.

Once the speeches have concluded, voting begins promptly.

Though methods may vary from precinct to precinct, each caucus-goer is typically handed a blank piece of paper on which to write the surname of the candidate for whom they are voting.

“In our precinct, I know this sounds cliché, but we passed around a red-white-and-blue sequined shoebox with a hole slit in the top, and you drop your ballot in there,” said Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn, who plans to attend his local caucus this year but will not vote out of deference to his position.

In contrast to the far more complicated procedures involved in the Democratic process, Iowa Republicans do not maintain a viability threshold, and there is no second-choice realignment vote for candidates with little support.

Votes will be tallied in full view of attendees at a table in the back of the room, where each campaign is allowed to station an observer.

Decisions about misspellings are made by precinct leaders, but a liberal interpretation of voter intent is typically employed. There have been surprisingly few disputes over the years.

The results for each precinct are announced to everyone who is still on hand, and precinct chairs then forward their counts to the Iowa Republican Party.

The state GOP is likely to launch a website in the coming days, which it will use to announce the results as they come in on caucus night.

In 2008, the Iowa GOP tabulated and announced the outcome soon after the caucuses closed, and the party has enacted further improvements that it hopes will help it determine the outcome even more efficiently.

Unless the tally is extraordinarily close, the winner should have enough time to make a victory speech while most TV viewers on the East Coast are still awake.

The candidates who decide to continue their campaigns will then hop on red-eye flights to New Hampshire, where a one-week sprint in the first-in-the-nation primary state begins promptly the next morning.