After millions of votes, dozens of debates and 18 months of incessant campaigning, 30 Democrats in a Washington hotel room this Saturday could seal the presidential fates of Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).

The stage is set for a titanic showdown that could reshape the Democratic nomination process.

The issue is whether Florida and Michigan should influence the outcome of the race even though they broke party rules to jump line and hold their primaries early. Clinton won both states and wants their votes counted. That could be disastrous for Obama, the front-runner.

Florida’s representatives are scheduled to speak first at the Marriott Wardman Park, followed by those from Michigan. It is unclear when the campaigns’ representatives will speak or who they will be.

The Clinton campaign said Tuesday it had not decided, and the Obama campaign did not respond to repeated requests for response.

The committee met last August and warned officers from the Florida Democratic Party that if they went ahead with the state legislature’s plan to hold the state’s primary on Jan. 29, ahead of the approved Feb. 5 window, the state would lose all of its delegates and the contest would amount to nothing more than a “beauty contest.”

Florida’s attempts to call the DNC’s bluff failed, and Michigan lawmakers followed suit, moving that state’s primary to Jan. 15, which resulted in their “beauty contest.”

Both states — critical to general-election success — enjoyed record turnout as Clinton cruised to two victories, although Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan.

Until now, the DNC has not budged on the penalties it applied, and the candidates adhered early on by not campaigning in either state.

Now Clinton’s hopes for the nomination, which are growing narrower by the day, hinge on a reprieve at Saturday’s meetings as she is desperately looking to cut into Obama’s margins by adding her popular vote and delegate totals from the two states.

Both campaigns will make a push to have their own appeals supercede those being considered by Florida and Michigan.

In Florida, party leaders have offered a compromise that would seat half of the state’s delegates and all of its superdelegates.

In Michigan, state Democrats looked to compromise by “splitting the difference” between what the two campaigns have said they want.

If the original Michigan results were awarded, Clinton would have won 73 delegates to Obama’s 55. The Obama campaign, however, has rejected the original results in both states, and in Michigan, it offered a 50-50 solution that would have split the state’s 128 delegates evenly.

Michigan’s party leaders will appeal Saturday for the committee to give Clinton 69 delegates and Obama 59.

Despite those appeals, the committee has “full range” to do what it wants with the numbers, or nothing at all, according to one DNC official.

If the committee fails to act, then once there are 56 days out from the party’s summer nominating convention, the issue becomes the jurisdiction of the convention’s credentials committee.

Neither campaign has ceded any ground on the fight, and the Clinton campaign said last week it has been working the phones with the committee members to count the original primary results. Already there are a number of reports that Clinton supporters are planning a rally outside of the committee meeting.

The DNC, anticipating such a move, and “in order to maintain the decorum of the meeting,” barred any “banners, signs, handouts and noisemakers” from the meeting.

“The reality is there’s limited space [inside], and we’re going to have to control that space tightly,” a DNC official said. “Folks are just going to have to contain themselves outside.”

The Obama campaign has flatly rejected the idea of counting the original results, adding in a recent internal campaign memo of surrogate talking points, which was obtained by The Hill, that “it makes no sense to include those totals.”

“Sen. Obama will abide by the rules that every candidate agreed to at the beginning of this campaign,” the memo said. “When he is the nominee, Barack Obama will seat both the Florida and Michigan delegates and build a campaign in both states that can win in November.”

Of the committee’s 30 members, 13 are Clinton supporters, eight are Obama supporters and the rest are either noncommittal or have declined to say.

Harold Ickes, a senior Clinton insider and longtime party operative, is one of the members of the committee that voted to strip Florida of its delegates, but he has since reversed course.

Ickes said last week that the effect of punishing the states had already been created because none of the candidates campaigned or spent money in Florida or Michigan.

While there has been much guessing about how the committee might rule Saturday, Ickes, who acknowledged that he is a well-known “vote counter,” said any guessing would be speculation.

Click here to see the member list of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee.