Amish voter project organization from Amish PAC’s plain voter project right now? Our strategy for registering and turning out Amish voters: Amish PAC deploys old-fashioned newspaper ads and billboards throughout rural Pennsylvania and Ohio Amish country as part of a voter registration campaign specifically tailored to potential Amish and Mennonite voters. We also make a special hotline available to potential Amish voters who are interested in receiving more information about voting and requesting a registration form. It’s common for an Amishman to call and request registration forms for his wife and entire family. Find many more information at AmishPAC.
Only about 7% of Amish people vote. Traditionally, men and women in the tradition avoid politics, including voting in elections. However, for those that do vote, their Christian convictions tend to drive their participation in the democratic process. As of 2020, 31 U.S. states have significant Amish populations, with an estimated number of 344,670 Amish residents. Pennsylvania has the largest population of Amish people in the U.S., at approximately 81,500. Ohio is a close second at 78,200. Indiana is third at 59,305.
This man pointed to a shift in the community from agriculture as a means for a livelihood as a reason for more politically aware people in the community. With more people in skilled trades and outside the somewhat insular community, the reality of politics has become more clear. “I think it’s our duty to vote, and the newer generation is feeling that more,” he said, adding that his father would have voted for the first time were it not for his sisters’ wedding and missing the absentee deadline. His mother is more “old-fashioned” and does not vote.
“We had one guy who said that he showed up at one house and he ended up taking five people to the polls that day. It was like hitting the jackpot,” said Walters. Walters said the Amish and Mennonites are fed up with farming and small business regulations that are affecting them and that this presidential election is just the beginning — he said the organization is looking ahead to the Ohio Senate race in 2018. “Sherrod Brown is up for re-election. We’ll have the Amish coming for him next.”
As the final vote tallies trickled in from Pennsylvania precincts, a man who worked to get the Amish community to the polls was still up watching returns in hopes his organization’s impact would push Donald Trump to the presidency. Ultimately, the Keystone State was not the final state to put Trump over the threshold, but Ben Walters, a co-founder of the Amish Political Action Committee, was happy. Though he hadn’t slept in 48 hours, Walters said, he planned to watch election returns until the nomination was secured or he dozed off — whichever came first.
The Amish and Mennonites are believed to be Republican voters because their beliefs align most closely with the policies of the Republican party, according to one Mennonite farmer in Rainsboro, Ohio, who said he does not vote. “I would probably vote Republican if I did vote because of the values of the times,” said the Rainsboro farmer in an interview this summer, who preferred not to be named in the newspaper. The Republican’s Amish PAC Plain Voters Project’s purpose was “to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by turning out a deeply conservative and often forgotten block of voters” and was “specifically tailored to potential Amish and Mennonite voters,” according to the Amish PAC website. Discover additional details on https://www.amishpac.com/.
U.S politicians such as George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and William Griest are said to have courted the Amish people for their votes in elections. The efforts made by these politicians to appeal to the few hundred thousand Amish people sprinkled throughout the country is a testament to the importance of Amish votes to politicians. Though the Amish community doesn’t seem large enough to strongly sway the election result, they are primarily situated in states that constitute the “swing states.” For example, in recent years in Pennsylvania, presidential elections have been decided by less than 100,000 votes in the state.