The war is on for the soldier vote. As part of his whirlwind foreign tour this week, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama travels to Iraq and Afghanistan to work on his national security credentials and shake hands with the troops in his second visit to the region. Republican Sen. John McCainhas been there eight times, most recently in March. He’s also a Vietnam War hero with a son who served with the Marines in Iraq.

Behind the scenes, the parties are engaged in a campaign maneuver that they hope will give them an edge with the armed forces on Nov. 4. In Congress, for instance, Democrats and Republicans competed to pass legislation that would help those in the military and military veterans, such as increased pay, health benefits and education allowances.

Republicans think that despite the divisions caused by the war, they still might have an Election Day edge with members of the armed services, who tend to be more conservative than the rest of the country. And so the GOP wants to ensure that every last person in uniform overseas has an opportunity to vote.

The House GOP whip, Roy Blunt of Missouri, introduced legislation this month that would push the Defense Department to get registration materials more promptly to active-duty soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. He said that the Pentagon has been lax about meeting deadlines for getting information to the troops and coordinating with state officials. Blunt’s legislation is meant to complement other Republican efforts, including bills by Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas that would require the Pentagon to get absentee ballots back to the states more quickly.

The Defense Department’s inspector general reported that in the run-up to the 2006 midterm election, only 40 percent of armed services members reported having received voter information. “We’re just trying to build some pressure here on the Department of Defense to do its job,” said Blunt.

Though the military vote went strongly for President Bush’s re-election in 2004, “Whether they will still be Republican this year when substantial numbers of military members come out to vote is a totally unknown question,” Blunt said.

Democrats, meanwhile, are putting a great deal of effort into winning over military veterans, and they are trying to get the Veterans Affairs Department to lift a ban on voter registration drives at VA facilities that was imposed in May, a week after hospital managers were told that the department’s general counsel would review requests for registration drives. The chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Hawaii Democrat Daniel K. Akaka, along with fellow Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts, wrote VA Secretary James B. Peake this month to urge him to reconsider. “Veterans receiving care at VA facilities risked life and limb to defend the freedoms we enjoy, including the right to vote,” they wrote.

Peake wrote back that he thought registration drives would leave his workers vulnerable to violations under the Hatch Act barring partisan political activities by federal employees.