Just one week from today, each of Iowa’s 99 counties will host their Democratic county conventions. It’s a development that has sparked the previously successful grassroots organization of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama back into action.

In an email to supporters on Friday, the Obama campaign provided detailed information based on county of residence as well as a link to a page with additional information on each county.

If you were selected as a delegate or alternate at the Iowa Caucus, Barack needs your help in the next stage of the process.

County conventions will be held across Iowa on Saturday, March 15th, and the number of delegates for each presidential candidate depends on our delegates and alternates turning out to support Barack.

Together we won a historic victory on January 3rd, but that was just the first step.

The Obama campaign has identified supporters in most of Iowa’s counties to serve as delegate chairpersons. These individuals — nearly 60 percent of whom are women — are resources for Obama’s county convention delegates who need to find replacements as well as outreach coordinators. Above all else, the job of the chairpersons is to ensure that those who committed on caucus night to support Obama as a delegate to the county convention show up and are counted once again.

Although Democrats attending the Iowa caucus on Jan. 3 divided into preference groups according to presidential candidates and each preference group selected delegates and alternates to the county conventions, those attending the county conventions are not beholden to their caucus night choice. For instance, several delegates and alternates were elected throughout the state as representatives of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. While some may choose to remain loyal to that particular candidate, there is no requirement that they do so.

At county convention, seated delegates will once again divide into preference groups. Any group that does not meet a 15 percent threshold will be given an opportunity to realign with the viable groups. It is from the remaining viable groups that delegates to the five district and the state convention are selected.

Although the Iowa caucus receives massive attention as the first real pulse of the nation in terms of presidential candidate preference, awarding of national delegates takes place at conventions. For instance, on caucus night in Linn County — the second largest Democratic county in Iowa — Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson each earned three county delegates, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton earned 173 delegates, Edwards earned 174 delegates and Obama earned 262 delegates. Due to the 15 percent threshold for viability at the county convention, delegates for Biden and Richardson will be forced realign into other groups.

The final make-up of delegates from the county conventions to the five district conventions in April will be determined by both the numbers of delegates that turn out for each specific group and the loyalty of the individual delegates to their caucus night preference group. Edwards delegates could move as a group to either Clinton or Obama, could split between the two or could attempt to move through the process with their loyalties to Edwards intact. Since roughly a third of all county convention delegates throughout the state are aligned with someone other than Clinton and Obama, the upcoming conventions are venting new political excitement in the state.

The Democratic numbers reported on caucus night were a true representation of those Iowans who attended the caucus. Those numbers, however, were not a final tally of the make-up of Iowa’s 57 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August.

With only seven days remaining before the county conventions, the Obama campaign has been the most active of the formerly commonplace presidential hopefuls in the state — both in terms of communicating with their own supporters and in terms of outreach to possible delegate pick-ups from those in the Biden, Richardson, Edwards and uncommitted delegate pools. Because the national race between Obama and Clinton has remained narrow, it is quite possible that a few more national delegates from the Hawkeye State could make a difference in Denver.