Republicans in states that haven’t voted yet can look at the early states with some consternation.

Iowa? Where only 100,000 of the state’s Republican voters participate, with the caucus format preventing night-duty cops, firemen, and hospital workers from taking part? A state with a minimum of military voters and 60 percent evangelical Christians? Where ethanol subsidies are a dominant issue?

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New Hampshire? Where 34 percent of Republican primary voters were not actual registered Republicans?

Well, the good news is we’re on to Michigan, where . . . once again, a large number of non-Republicans can have a say in who wins the Republican primary.

To refresh: Michigan, like many other states, looked on in envy as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina dominated the attention of presidential candidates. Unsatisfied with their own relatively early date in the process, state lawmakers scheduled their primary even earlier. The two parties’ national committees objected — yes, someone tried and failed to keep some order in this chaotically front-loaded process — and have threatened to punish the states by cutting their delegations to the national convention. The Michigan Republican delegation is slated to be cut from 60 to 30; the Democratic state delegation of 156 is supposed to be eliminated entirely.

So on paper, there shouldn’t be any delegates at stake for Democrats on Tuesday — an enormous incentive for the state’s Democratic voters to ask for Republican ballots, where their votes might mean something. But the state Democratic party is threatening to scream bloody murder over “disenfranchisement” if their delegates aren’t seated. Could the nominee, and/or chairman Howard Dean, withstand the chants of “count every vote” and “my fathers fought for the right to vote,” from a heavily black state? Would they want that to be a noisy subplot at their convention in Denver? What if those 156 delegates could make the difference between Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama becoming the nominee?

Local Republicans are even crowing that if the Democratic National Committee refuses to recognize the results of the state’s primary, the national Democratic leadership will so outrage the locals that the state and its 17 electoral votes will turn red in November.

Most candidates buckled under to the DNC pressure, pledging not to campaign in the state and removing their name from the ballot. Well, except for Hillary Clinton. She is the only major Democratic candidate on the ballot, and could — in fact, should — walk away with the vast majority of the 156 delegates. CNN currently puts the delegate fight relatively close — Obama leading with 25, Hillary just behind at 24, and Edwards at 18. But the network puts Hillary way ahead when the votes of “superdelegates” — high-ranking elected officeholders and party officials — are counted: she has 183 to Obama’s 78 and Edwards’s 52.

So if you’re Obama or Edwards, you don’t want Democrats crossing over to play mischief in the Republican primary, as Hillary could easily throw more than 100 delegates onto her pile, which may or may not be counted later. (Pulling out of Michigan in accordance to the DNC’s wishes is going to look like a mistake on Obama’s part.) It seems reasonable to conclude that a state that is 14 percent African-American may have some votes for Obama, and that a state with a workforce that is 21 percent unionized may have some support for the economic populism of Edwards. But since their names are not on the ballot, the best they can hope for is for Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted,” and for those uncommitted delegates to vote Obama or Edwards.

There are also Michigan Republicans who’d prefer that their primary not be swamped by crossover Democrats. These GOPers have a few unexpected allies: Senator Carl Levin and Congressman John Conyers are touting “Detroiters for Uncommitted Voters.” Conyers and his wife, Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, will begin airing radio ads this week urging voters to cast their ballots for uncommitted.

The candidates have pledged to honor the DNC’s ruling, and are not campaigning in Michigan. But the Obama campaign is touting grassroots efforts to “Get Out the Uncommitted Vote.”