Best Amish voter help project advices by Amish PAC’s plain voter project? 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 a lot more info at https://twitter.com/TheAmishPAC.
In Pennsylvania, during the 2016 elections, out of the 15,055 Amish people eligible to vote in the state, only 2,052 registered. And of those, only 1,016 participated in the voting process. The highest turnout of Amish voters by percentage was in 2004, when about 13% of registered Amish voters participated in the elections and voted for George W. Bush, as they are typically Republican by registration and conviction. The seeming apathy of the Amish people stems from personal preference, though the church leaders discourage their followers from getting too involved in politics.
Pointing to farm issues, business taxes and regulation, religious liberty, Second Amendment rights and health care, Walters said the Amish were affected by the issues as much as other Americans. He added that he didn’t understand why the community didn’t vote in large numbers until studying the subject, which helped the PAC develop its strategy over a six-month span. The Amish PAC used “unconventional ways, old-fashioned ways, ways that (the Amish) are comfortable with,” including billboards, newspaper ads, sending information by mail and phone calls.
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.
Walters noted that it was too early to tell how many Amish voters in the county, went to the polls, saying he will have to review logs and canvassing sheets to measure the impact of the PAC’s efforts. Officials at several Lancaster County polling locations said that by lunchtime, they saw more voters from the Amish community turn out than ever. Even more cast votes in the afternoon and evening — between morning and evening wedding celebrations across Amish Country. Around 20 weddings were performed in the community Tuesday.
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. See even more details on Amish vote registering advices.
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.
