Washington, DC—The Secular Coalition for America today released its 2012 Presidential Candidate Scorecard for the general election–a guide for secular-minded Americans on the presidential candidates in the upcoming election.

Candidates from the two major parties, as well as significant third party candidates were included and received the following grades:

Gary Johnson, Libertarian: B
Barack Obama, Democrat: C
Mitt Romney, Republican: F
Jill Stein, Green Party: Incomplete

The scorecard assigned grades of “A”, “B”, “C” and “F” to the four candidates who appear on the ballot in enough states to amass the required 270 electoral votes to be elected President of the United States. Grades were based on their public statements and actions in five areas and on 17 specific issues. The questions related to religion-government entanglement on topics of Government and Values, Health and Safety, Education, Government Funding and Government Acts.

“This scorecard shows that our current politicians still have a long way to go in protecting the secular values that America was founded on,” said Edwina Rogers, Executive Director of the Secular Coalition, and cited a recently released Pew Forum study. “Last week we learned that now nearly 20 percent of Americans are religiously unaffiliated. Too often we see lawmakers shy away from the non-religious, but the statistics show that lawmakers can no longer afford to ignore us.”