Bill Poole stands in the Falklands capital of Stanley beside posters calling for a "yes" vote to remain British in a referendum Sunday and Monday. Great Britain has held the islands since 1833. (Tony Chatter, AFP/Getty Images)

LONDONOn Sunday and Monday, the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands, a wind-swept, sparsely populated archipelago that was a final way station for early 20th-century explorers like Ernest Shackleton en route to the icy wastes of Antarctica, will go to the polls in a referendum on the islands' future.

A total of 1,672 eligible voters vastly outnumbered by the islands' estimated population of 1 million penguins and 700,000 sheep will be asked to answer yes or no to a straightforward proposition:

"Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?"

The alternative would be to begin a transition to Argentine control, perhaps by a period of shared sovereignty, as Argentina has suggested. The vote comes three decades after Argentina tried to settle the issue by force, invading the islands and losing a 10-week war with Britain that cost the lives of 255 British and 649 Argentine soldiers, sailors and airmen, as well as three civilians on the islands.

For those inclined to a wager, the referendum is a lead-pipe cinch. The majority of the islands' residents are British citizens, and local pundits expect the vote for retaining the status quo will run a few points short, if that, of 100 percent.

About the only uncertainty is whether the fog that sweeps over the Falklands will ground the aircraft that carry the ballots from eight separate islands to Stanley, the capital.

The benchmark is a 2002 referendum in Gibraltar, another British dependency, where the vote for retaining the British link or accepting a new status tying the isthmus on which Gibraltar stands to Spain was 98.5percent. That, too, was not much of a cliffhanger because many of those eligible to vote were of British descent.

For Argentina and Britain, the 1982 conflict was a shock enough to lead, in time, to the collapse of the Argentine military junta that mounted the invasion, and to propel Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in deep political trouble at home when the war gave her an opportunity to play the "Iron Lady," to a second election victory in 1983.

The hope, sustained for years after the war, was that both countries would put the bitterness behind them and build a relationship on interests like trade that pragmatists on both sides saw as more important than the Falklands.

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Falkland Islands to choose in referendum: Britain or Argentina?