BAGHDAD, Iraq – Four days before historic elections in Iraq, many candidates’ names are still secret. Almost no one is out pressing the flesh. And fliers threaten death to anyone who dares vote.

The violence in Iraq and the security precautions it has prompted have put an unusual – and sometimes troubling – twist on the nature of the campaign leading up to Sunday’s elections.

“How can you choose somebody to represent you without knowing even who he is?” one Iraqi woman, Ibtisam Safwan, who is living in Jordan, asked this week.

In a beauty contest, she quipped, “you know about every inch in the contestants’ bodies.” But on the lists of Iraqi candidates, many blanks remained as of yesterday.

The fact that candidates’ names remain unknown has raised concerns that many Iraqis will choose a slate based mainly on the top few candidates, without knowing much about anyone else on the list, or their positions.

It also means many Iraqis are susceptible to influence from people they trust – voting, for example, according to what their imams or tribal leaders recommend.

Despite such peculiarities, the campaign overall has been relatively enthusiastic, with posters plastered on the capital’s concrete walls and clear signs of grassroots, get-out-the vote drives.

In a remote corner of the predominantly Shiite south earlier this week, for example, two clerics drove a BMW on unpaved roads in heavy rain – getting stuck in the mud several times before reaching the remote al-Musharrah area.

They gathered some people at the home of the head of the powerful al-Sawaed tribe and made a pitch for them to vote, as a religious duty, for the candidate list endorsed by Iraq’s top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. After that, they drove on to meet the leader of the Kahla tribe in the Bomohammed area, to make the same pitch.

Other Western-style campaign features, like boisterous rallies or big public speeches, are almost unknown at a time when Iraq is plagued by assassination threats, noted an American Embassy official recently, speaking to reporters in the southern town of Hilla.

Instead, political meetings tend to be quieter and behind closed doors, held in buildings that party members own inside compounds for security, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In addition, few parties have put out detailed descriptions of their stands on the issues, including what type of constitution their members would push for if elected, the official noted.

Because of the power of incumbency and the security guards the office brings, Prime Minister Allawi has been one of the few candidates able to meet the public – flying around the country and touring reconstruction sites, often with reporters in tow.

He and other better-financed candidates also have been able to buy TV and newspaper ads. The best-known candidates, like Mr. Allawi and the head of the Ayatollah al-Sistani-endorsed ticket, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, have given newspaper and TV interviews, too. But most campaigns rely on word of mouth and election posters plastered on walls. More candidate names will soon be known.

A member of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, Adel al-Lami, said the commission would today begin releasing the names of all candidates whose names have not yet been made public, printing them in local newspapers.

Some parties asked that their bottom-ticket candidates’ names be kept secret, said the chief U.N. electoral official here, Carlos Valenzuela. But the Iraqi electoral commission turned down that request, saying voters had a right to know all names, he said.

Many Iraqis say the name secrecy is not that significant: They know whom the main lists represent because of the top candidates’ political, religious, and ethnic backgrounds.

In a polling station on Sunday, a voter will be able to choose only once from among the various lists, essentially voting for all the candidates on one list. The number of candidates on each list who are elected depends on the percentage of votes their ticket receives overall.

Even beyond the name mystery, intimidation has been the single-biggest factor in the campaign. The deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, called it “extraordinary.” One recent flier handed out near polling stations in the capital warned people that if they dared to vote, their families’ blood would “wash the streets of Baghdad.”