The odds that federal electors would ever be more than rubber-stamp drones were once about the same as Bill Gates' making People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list. Then we all woke up Nov. 8 to be reminded that, oh yeah, a hundred million of us marked ballots, but 538 electors are the only Americans who vote for president. And if just a few of them decided to bust out of the partisan corral, they could change the name on the White House mailbox.

     So as an elector, I could get some heavy woo pitched my way to change my vote. Couriers at my door bearing flowers and Super Bowl tickets. My phone jangling like wind chimes in a Santa Ana, offering ambassadorships.

     Changing my pledged vote could make me a faithless elector. I've been called worse. And I'd be in all the history books, which I'd have time to read while doing three years in the slammer for breaking the law by changing my vote.

     At 2 o'clock that afternoon, California electors will take their seats in the dollar-bill-green Assembly chamber. Because Al Gore won the state's popular vote, all 54 electors'selected by each Democratic candidate for Congress and Senate, whether that candidate won or lost'are committed to vote Democratic.

     Oxnard's mayor, Manuel Lopez, will fly up with his wife and his daughter, a political science major. James Garrison, a Glendale insurance company president, will bring his wife and son Max, who took his dad to fifth grade for election show-and-tell. An elector at 29, Jill S. Hardy will bring the curiosity of her Huntington Beach High social studies students, who are more interested in this now, because they know someone involved.

     By 3 o'clock, they must be finished. A photographer will take pictures, which electors can buy. To Gene Hurd of Glendora, acting president of UAW local 808, This is a historic moment; if things change, the next time, there may not be an electoral college. But I can say I did it once. If there's any time to do it, this is it.

     Since Nov. 8, it's occurred to all of them: What becomes of this antique ritual I'm a part of?

     Flo Pickett, a teacher-turned-real-estate maven in Long Beach, recalls debating the point of the electoral college when she was in college. Being young I said, 'Oh, abolish that'let's have direct elections.' And I'm not one who gets more conservative as I get older.

     San Bernardino County elector Eloise Reyes studied up and found that in 200 years there have been 700 proposals to change this; none of them got anywhere. I realize I'm at odds with some of my colleagues, but I think the system really does work.

     In Cathedral City, elector and councilman Greg Pettis speaks today to high school kids about an institution he thinks has outlived its usefulness. I understand why [the founders] did it, but, especially in this election, we see that every single vote does and should matter.

     And in Fountain Valley, N. Mark Lam, a Taiwanese-born attorney who has argued cases in the state Supreme Court, can quote the 12th Amendment chapter and verse.

     If you read the Constitution correctly, he says, electors are supposed to vote the will of the people they represent'not your own interest, not your own party.

     If the Florida mess were happening here, I would vote my conscience. I would vote for democracy first and my country second and the party, in the biggest scheme of things, would be third.

     And so much for my dreams of elector courtship. Only Flo Pickett reported getting the rush, from a Harry Browne fan begging her to vote for the Libertarian, because My life depends on it, your life depends on it, America depends on it, the Free World depends on it.

     Electors' role was always so perfunctory: That's why I was never interested. But when Wyman turned 70 and the calendar turned 2000, she agreed. I picked a good year.

     What all the electors get is a toehold on history. What they don't get is all expenses paid'just five cents a mile each way, plus $10.

     The check won't even arrive until next year'maybe before the new president does, maybe not.