My colleague Rachel Tabachnick has documented a flagrant example of Christian right electioneering at Pittsburgh polling place, and asked me to post this for her here.
As you'll see from the cell phone pics below. What is different about this episode is not only how flagrant it is, but that Rachel had the presence of mind to document the episode and to get it reported to election officials.
This, folks, is how to get it done.
This was first posted at Talk to Action, and we will update it here if and when we get updates.
PA Family Council and Other Rightwing Voter’s Guides at Pennsylvania Polling Places
The photo at right is the polling place for Pittsburgh’s 19th Ward, District 6. Voters must pass the table shown entering the polling place at the Grace Episcopal Church on Sycamore St. On the table are copies of a 2012 Voter’s Guide labelled as “An Impartial, Non-Partisan Guide to the November 6th Election.” The guide is from the Pennsylvania Family Council, the legislative arm of the Pennsylvania Family Institute and the state’s affiliate of the Family Research Council (FRC) and Focus on the Family. I’m also following reports of other material at polling sites in Western Pennsylvania, including from Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition and from Life PAC of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The FRC is led by Tony Perkins, who has boasted about his role in writing the RNC platform, including calling for constitutional amendments defining marriage and to give legal rights of personhood at the moment of conception. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the FRC as a hate group because of its “false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.” A quick glance at the PA Family Council/PA Family Institute website will confirm that the organization is not “impartial.”
The issues covered in the guide are abortion and other reproductive issues, gay rights, the Affordable Care Act, school vouchers, cap and trade, stem cell research, and pornography. Photographs of the PA Family Council Voter’s Guide below.