Amish voter project guides with Amish PAC in 2022

Amish voting help recommendations by Amish PAC's plain voter project in 2022? 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 additional information at Amish PAC's Plain Voter Project.

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.

A middle-aged Amish couple said they were aware of the PAC's efforts but voted based on the issues. Both were proud they had voted since 2000 and had no plans to stop. The husband said he was a supporter of Second Amendment rights and did not believe Clinton would serve gun owners as president. He said Trump had failures as a businessman, shaky morals and multiple marriages but would be a good leader. The man's wife echoed the same sentiment, adding that she didn't think a woman was fit to be president. Both said a woman wouldn't be good under pressure, with the husband noting that though Germany and Britain have had women leaders, those countries have much smaller populations and are therefore easier to oversee than the U.S.

The newspaper advertisements featured a photo of Trump and bullet points that read, “Trump has never been a politician or held elected office” and “never had a glass of alcohol.” According to its financial disclosure forms filed with the Federal Elections Commission in Oct., Amish PAC paid $9,392.14 to Lamar Outdoor Advertising for four billboards in July and August that went up in Ohio and Pennsylvania encouraging the Amish to vote for Donald Trump on Election Day.

"We knew it would be close from the beginning," Walters said. "We knew the Amish were a sizeable enough amount of the population to provide the margin, should the election come down to the wire in Pennsylvania." In Lancaster County, Trump defeated Clinton by a little more than 47,000 votes, a margin about 5,000 votes greater than Mitt Romney' margin of victory in 2012 over President Barack Obama. The 137,000-plus votes Trump won in Lancaster County are among more than 2.9 million votes the president-elect secured in Pennsylvania. Election returns currently have Trump winning Pennsylvania by about 68,000 votes.

He said the official report on how many Amish voters registered and then followed through with voting for Trump won’t be available until the spring, but he did say that at the close of voter registration Oct. 11, the GOP had registered 10,403 Amish voters compared to the Democrats, who registered 9,961 — a difference of just 442 people, said Walters. He said Pennsylvania is the state that put Trump over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election. Find a lot more information 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.