The deadline which isn't a deadline

The Rocky Mountain Synod office keeps referring to the December 15 "deadline" for submission of names to be the synod's new bishop.

The constitutional deadline, and therefore, the only deadline that really counts, is the first ballot of the actual bishop's election, which will be April 24, 2012.

The December date should be considered the "deadline, sort of" or the "not-quite-drop-dead deadline" or perhaps, for an eschatological angle, "the penultimate deadline."