The man behind a company that got a big state contract to educate Pennsylvania voters on the commonwealth’s restrictive new voter ID law is a fundraiser for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Ads created by his company, a Republican lobbying group, encourage Pennsylvania residents to obtain state-issued photo identification so they don’t “miss out” on their right to vote. Republican lobbyist Chris Bravacos, who according to the Center For Responsive Politics has thus far bundled $30,000 for Romney’s campaign, is president and CEO of the Bravo Group, which received a $249,660 government contract from Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration for the ad campaign. Two ads the company created were posted online by the Bravo Group back in April (according to a Google cache) and taken down after Philadelphia City Paper’s Daniel Denvir published a story about the contract on Sunday. Occupy Harrisburg later reposted the two videos, one of which uses what looks like stock photos of a diverse cast of smiling individuals holding ID-sized cards that read “My Valid Pennsylvania Identification.” The campaign’s slogan? “Your right to vote: it’s one thing you never want to miss out on.”
In addition to Bravacos — who served as executive director of the state GOP — the Bravo Group employs Brad Cary, who served as voter registration and absentee ballot coordinator for the Republican State Committee. Contract documents given to TPM by the Cost of Freedom Project, an initiative to develop location based apps to help voters obtain identification, show that at $249,675, the contract was just a hair under the $250,000 cap. The solicitation from the state calls for the contractor to “plan and execute a grassroots community outreach campaign to reach specific populations that could be less likely to have acceptable photo identification.” The Bravo Group’s proposal was supposed to “include a list of community groups and organizations that will partner with the Contractor in order to educate their constituents regarding the voter identification requirements,” but the group’s actual proposal doesn’t appear to be publicly available.
Full Article: Big Romney Donor Paid To Inform Pennsylvanians About Voter ID Law | TPMMuckraker.