Quality Amish vote registering advices with 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. See more details at help the Amish register to vote.
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.
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.
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. See even more information at https://www.amishpac.com/.
Ensuring that unregistered conservatives, such as the Amish people, go to the polls to vote is essential to those who challenge incumbents. This may be why Democrats and Republicans have spent much of the past four years convincing the Amish people that casting a vote is essential. One of the significant efforts toward improving voting among Amish people is the creation of the AmishPAC. The committee utilizes media channels such as newspaper ads and billboards throughout communities with a significant Amish presence. They take this approach since Amish people are not on social media platforms, nor do they watch television.