Republicans are pursuing support from the Amish in Pennsylvania, where only a small minority vote in elections

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — On a recent weekday afternoon, an Amish man in a horse-drawn carriage navigated a busy intersection with car traffic in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, past a billboard that proclaimed, “Pray for God’s grace for our nation.”

The board contained a large image of a broad-brimmed straw hat, which was often worn by the Amish. If there was any further doubt about its target audience, the smaller print listed the sponsor as “Fer Die Amische” – referring to the Amish in their Pennsylvania German dialect.

Researchers say most of the Amish do not register to vote, reflecting the Christian movement’s historic separatism from mainstream society, as well as retaining their dialect and horse-drawn carriage transportation.

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But a small minority voted, and the Amish are most numerous in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania. So they are being targeted this year in decades-long efforts to register more of them to vote.

Republicans seek their votes through billboards, ads, door-to-door fundraising and community meetings. Republican campaigners see the Amish as amenable to GOP talking points — less government, less regulation, religious freedom.

“They just want the government to not only stay out of their business, but out of their religion,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., whose district includes Lancaster County, in the heart of the nation’s largest Amish population. Smucker, whose own family background is Amish, predicted a dramatic increase in the Amish vote “based on the enthusiasm we’re seeing.”

Most Amish don’t vote, but every vote counts in a swing state
But while such an effort could produce an increase, don’t expect the Amish vote to dramatically change the Keystone State’s bottom line, said Steven Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County.

“For most of Amish history and in most Amish communities today, Amish people don’t vote,” he said. “They haven’t voted, they’re not voting, and I think it’s safe to say in the near future we wouldn’t expect them to.”

But Amish in a handful of settlements in Lancaster and elsewhere have voted, typically less than 10% of their population, Nolt said. He has overseen post-election analyzes of voter registration trends in areas with significant Amish populations — painstaking research that involves cross-checking voter rolls and church records by hand and cannot be done in real time during an election.

There are currently about 92,000 Amish of all ages in Pennsylvania, according to the Young Center’s research, which is based on a variety of sources, including almanacs, newspapers and directories. About half are in the Lancaster area and the rest scattered around the state.

But in a community with many children, less than half of the Amish are of voting age, Nolt said. In 2020, he estimated about 3,000 Amish voted in the Lancaster area, and several hundred elsewhere, he said.

“Even if we were to imagine, for example, here in Lancaster there would be a huge percentage turnout … we’re looking at several hundred to maybe a thousand extra voters,” he said.

By itself, that can’t come close to flipping a state that went for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by about 80,000 votes.

Of course, the Amish are hardly the only religious or ethnic constituency that candidates are courting. “In a context where every vote counts, every vote counts,” Nolt said. “But no, we’re not talking about tens of thousands of Amish votes.”

Still, Smucker is optimistic about a larger turnout. He said Republican messaging is resonating in a changing Amish community.

“It was once again agrarian, but they’ve long since run out of land in Lancaster County,” he said. Only a minority are still in agriculture, with many starting small businesses where the Republican emphasis on limited regulation appeals. Plus, he said, the Amish community perceives Republicans as more friendly to religious freedom and anti-abortion.

He said the Amish tell stories of how their ancestors were more likely to vote in the 1950s during controversies over compulsory schooling policies, but the practice has declined since then.

Wayne Wengerd, Ohio State director of the Amish Steering Committee, which navigates the relationship between Amish community leaders and government officials, recalls registration efforts as far back as the 1960s. Get-out-the-vote activists “are going to go after anyone and everyone they think they could possibly convince to vote for their party,” he said. “The Amish are no different.”

Amish theology keeps the church separate from the government
But most Amish avoid voting in accordance with “two-kingdom” theology, which draws a sharp separation between earthly government and the church with its focus on a heavenly kingdom. They see themselves “primarily as citizens of another kingdom,” Wengerd said.

But, he noted, some still vote. “The Amish are just like any other people,” he said. “Not everyone thinks the same.”

Rural Lancaster County has voted Republican for generations, Nolt said, so it’s also not surprising that any Amish who vote would be influenced by their neighbors’ preferences. Most Amish voters register as Republicans, he said. .

An ad in a Lancaster-area newspaper, attributed to an anonymous “Amishman” from Ohio, said that refusing to vote would violate Scripture by failing to “stand against evil” while “every good thing our nation stands for, will be destroyed.” A voicemail message seeking comment left with the phone number on the ad was not returned.

Nolt said the ad appeals to a theology more akin to mainstream Reformed Protestantism, which says Christians have a duty to both God and country, than to traditional Amish theology.

“It’s very different from anything in historical Amish documents, which would have said that the responsibility of the church is to be the church,” he said.

Nolt said a letter sent to Amish residents urged them to vote Republican, but that it did not appear to target the Amish in particular, citing issues such as immigration.

Widespread support for Trump among conservative Christians of many stripes has long puzzled observers because of his casino ventures, allegations of sexual abuse and vulgar public statements.

However, Nolt said that compared to the separatist lifestyle of the Amish, none of the presidential candidates are much like them — a reason most of them don’t vote. “Donald Trump’s life is very different from an Amish person’s life, but so is Kamala Harris’s,” he said.

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