NEW YORK – Wal-Mart is urging more than 1.3 million of its U.S. employees to register to vote and “study political issues,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

The voter registration drive comes as Wal-Mart “increasingly wades into political frays it has sought to avoid for most of its 44-year history,” writes the Journal, adding that the retailer has been “dogged” for more than a year by groups such as Wal-Mart Watch and WakeUpWalMart.com.

Wal-Mart Vice President of Government Affairs Lee Culpepper told the Journal the voter initiative is “absolutely nonpartisan,” noting that by November, Wal-Mart will “establish methods” to keep employees informed about when politicians discuss Wal-Mart or take actions that could affect the company.

“The manner in which we deliver it could provide opportunities for us to correct the record,” Culpepper told the newspaper.

Wal-Mart also notes that its employees could play a pivotal role in national elections. For example, Wal-Mart has nearly 95,000 employees in Florida; nearly 50,000 in Ohio; about 48,000 in Pennsylvania, about 17,300 in Iowa; and about 8,000 in New Hampshire.

Next week store managers will begin receiving the voter registration packets and passing them out to employees. Each packet includes state-specific voter materials and a letter from Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, as well as instructions from the League of Women Voters “to help voters determine the right poll to visit and to remember to bring their identification, among other things,” writes the Journal.

If all U.S. Wal-Mart employees were to vote the same, they would “form a massive voting block with better-than-average representation” among voter categories that are traditionally dominated by Democrats, such as women and minorities.

The newspaper writes that of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million U.S. employees, 60.5 percent are female, nearly 32 percent are minorities and nearly 17 percent are aged 55 or older.

Meanwhile, according to Wal-Mart Watch spokesman Nu Wexler, Wal-Mart’s voter drive is a “gimmick” to deter attention from criticisms about the company’s wages and healthcare benefits. Wexler told the newspaper that Wal-Mart’s problems with its healthcare benefits, wages and gender discrimination “go beyond politics” and could last well beyond the 2006 and 2008 elections.