WASHINGTON — Kevin Dellicker stays away from politics when he reports for duty at the National Guard armory in Harrisburg, Pa. But out of uniform, the captain in the Pennsylvania National Guard does everything he can to persuade the people he served with in Iraq to reelect President Bush.
Shaking some of the same hands as Dellicker is Jonathan Soltz, a former Army captain recently returned from Iraq who spends his days pleading with soldiers to vote for Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee.
In the swing state of Pennsylvania, where both live, the votes of those in the military -- including more than 15,000 reservists -- who are serving or have served in Iraq or Afghanistan are much in demand.
But which way the people fighting the war will vote in Pennsylvania and elsewhere is anybody's guess.
Tight restrictions on seeking the votes of active-duty military personnel, along with taboos in the military culture against the open expression of political views, make it tough for candidates to target military voters -- and make it tough for pollsters to figure them out.
Historically, military turnout in elections has been low.
With more than 400,000 troops overseas now, many living in difficult and dangerous conditions, it is not clear whether those who want to vote this fall will succeed. A Pentagon initiative meant to make it easier for troops to cast absentee ballots via the Internet and by fax is being criticized as vulnerable to tampering.
All that has left the Bush and Kerry campaigns working the edges of a potential voting bloc that could be significant in a tight election.
"It's very hard to get a read on how the active-duty personnel are reacting to the war politically, because they are so busy reacting on the ground," Soltz said. "So what I do -- I talk to my friends, tell them to e-mail their friends about Kerry; I talk to people like me who are out of the service now. I'm not going to go give a speech to a group of soldiers. It's not the thing they want to hear while they're just trying to keep their lives together."
Political activity in the military is -- like much else -- strictly regulated.
Troops are not prohibited from expressing political opinions, but they are not allowed to work for partisan political organizations while in the military. Campaigning is prohibited at military facilities, and the rules for conducting polls among active-duty troops are so cumbersome that pollsters have generally given up.
