In Pennsylvania, a push to win the Amish vote

To Scott Presler, the founder of Early Vote Action, winning Pennsylvania for Donald Trump is a matter of back-of-the-napkin math.

“I’m a data guy,” the founder of Early Vote Action, a conservative PAC, told me. Trump lost the state in 2020 by just 80,660 votes, a margin of 1%. To win this November, Presler needed to find a demographic group that size or bigger that he could swing toward Trump. How about the state’s 80,000 truckers? “That’s the election,” Presler said. The same could be said for the state’s 930,000 hunters, or 800,000 veterans.

But Presler isn’t focused on any of those groups. He has his eyes on the Amish.

On paper, the Amish, in the aggregate, seem like quintessential conservative voters. They value religious liberty and big, strong families. They eschew the influence of government in their lives. They run their own schools and so they appreciate educational freedom. It is no surprise that the three most common Republican last names in the U.S., according to a recent Washington Post analysis, are affiliated with the Amish — and concentrated in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County. If any group were to deliver solid Republican votes, it is the Amish.

The problem? Most Amish don’t vote. There is no hard-and-fast rule against it: instruction varies from community to community. To the Amish, the highest priority is building a heavenly kingdom. They attempt to live separate from the world, and that includes worldly governments. No devout Amish person will hold public office. Most devout Amish people, then, tend toward avoiding supporting or opposing those who do.

That hasn’t stopped attempts to court the Amish vote. George W. Bush toured eastern Pennsylvania’s Amish country in 2004 and made a concerted pitch for their vote — which he got, a record threshold of turnout, about 13%. In both 2016 and 2020, a group called Amish PAC poured $150,000 into signage and mailers, Lancaster Online reported . The local Republican Party apparatus in Lancaster County made a concerted push to lead door-to-door canvassing efforts toward the Amish in 2020, with modest results: nearly 3,000 Amish people voted, per Dr. Steven Nolt, director and senior scholar at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.

But Presler knows 3,000 won’t win Pennsylvania for Trump: his vision is getting far more. That’s why he moved to Pennsylvania earlier this year.

It’s an odd match — Presler, a long-haired, gay conservative, who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and reportedly left his prior job with the Virginia Republican Party after a scandal, and the pacifist, pious Amish — but Presler has quickly assembled an on-the-ground team of employees and volunteers to aid in the effort. Their chief strategy is door-to-door canvassing — using public records to find Amish homes, knock Amish doors and register would-be Amish voters. If the parents aren’t interested, they ask if there are any children turning 18 soon that might be.

“I go in, and I challenge them respectfully, and say, why don’t you guys vote?” Presler told me. Presler’s group offers rides to the polls for Amish families; if they prefer absentee ballots, Presler helps them register to vote-by-mail. “It’s actually very ironic, because Republicans are kind of against mail-in voting,” he said. “But the Amish, they like a mail-in vote because it’s secret and it’s private, right? So they love the idea of a secret ballot coming to them that then they just mail, and nobody in their town has to know that they voted. The Amish elder doesn’t know how they have voted. Nobody has to know.”

The effort has earned Presler something of celebrity status in Trumpworld. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara, the Republican National Committee’s new co-chair, tried to hire Presler to lead the GOP’s “legal ballot harvesting” initiative; Presler and Donald Trump Jr. have appeared on podcasts together, fantasizing about winning the Amish vote.

The sales pitch is simple, Presler says. Every aspect of Amish living, Presler told me, is “under attack.” Overbearing government restriction threatens Amish agriculture, pointing to an Amish farmer near Lancaster whose dairy farm was raided after customers were reportedly sickened by raw milk. The COVID-19 pandemic unearthed conversations about religious liberty, including the ability to gather to worship.

But for as much as Trumpworld loves Presler, Presler’s hardest task is convincing the Amish — a humble, devout people — to love a candidate whose lifestyle exemplifies so much of what they, both culturally and religiously, avoid.

“Lesser of evils”

Fairview Groceries is no different than most of the other small, family-run Amish stores in the hills surrounding Lancaster. Ephraim King, the store’s owner, has made a living selling dry goods and produce, and his shop attracts Amish and “English” — the non-Amish — alike.

When asked if he will vote in this year’s election, King chose not to say. “Voting is not encouraged or discouraged by the church — it’s a personal decision,” he told me. What is encouraged by the church, however, is “being honest, truthful and respectful.” Finding candidates who meet those standards can be a hard sell, King suggested. “People here say they’re voting for the lesser of evils,” he said.

That hasn’t stopped candidates from making the pitch. Amish communities in Pennsylvania still tell stories about George M. Leader, the state’s Democratic governor in the 1950s, who protected Amish education. Leader was raised on a chicken farm and grew up delivering chicks to nearby Amish people. That affinity led him, as governor, to sign a law allowing Amish teens to be exempt from high school. (Amish schools stop after 8th grade.) Local politicians have earned notoriety for preserving Amish exceptions to Social Security tax, since they do not accept the benefits; and for observing Amish people’s pacifist refusal to serve in the armed forces; and amending child labor laws to allow Amish youth to work for their family businesses.

“When we talk about our freedom of religion, freedom of beliefs, one thing is that our goal is to have our children stay on the farm,” said Amos Miller, who owns a dairy farm in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. “That is one of our valuable connections — being connected to the land. So when we see that is at stake, we do what we can to preserve that.”

The most successful effort to turn out Amish people in a presidential election was 2004, when then-President George W. Bush campaigned through Pennsylvania’s Amish country and secured some 13% percent of the Amish vote in Lancaster County, according to an analysis by Nolt, the Elizabethtown College professor. Bush visited the Lancaster area three times in the buildup to the election, and he held at least one private meeting with Amish people. Between the 1990s and early 2000s, only about 5 to 8% of eligible Amish voters turned out in presidential elections; Bush’s 13% served as a high-water mark.

In 2016, an independent group attempted to replicate Bush’s success. Called AmishPAC, the Virginia-based committee pelted eastern Pennsylvania with billboards and newspaper ads, like one large “VOTE TRUMP’ sign that showed an Amish buggy and said, “Hard Working, Pro-Life, Family Dedicated . . . Just Like YOU.”

But Trump never visited the area, and the ad campaign seemed to fizzle. The print ads were sent out haphazardly in farming periodicals and local mailers, and the billboards were placed on highways, though few Amish people drive their buggies on the highways. “It was an effort, but it wasn’t very specific,” Nolt, the professor, said. “It wasn’t very targeted.” Only about 1,019 Amish people cast votes in the county in 2016, out of 15,055 eligible voters, per Nolt’s analysis.

Come 2020, the local Republican Party organization in Lancaster led a more formal outreach effort. Door-to-door canvassers were sent to register Amish people to vote. A sense of frustration toward perceived government overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited some church and school gatherings, played well with the Republican pitch.

In Ohio, a “Trump Train Parade,” featuring Trump flags and Amish buggies, rolled through a rural town. During a rally in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Trump called out the Amish by name: “Don’t tell anybody, but the Pennsylvania Dutch are voting en masse,” Trump said . “They’re voting. I heard that the other day.”

When Nolt and his fellow researchers concluded their study of 2020 election turnout, cross-checking Lancaster County voter registration data with Amish church membership directories, they found a big jump in Amish turnout: some 2,940 people voted in the election out of over 4,000 registered, more than double those figures in 2016. Due to the pandemic, Nolt and his team couldn’t conduct the traditional face-to-face research that would get at why that jump occurred. Nolt’s hypothesis, offered with a shrug, was this: turnout efforts were more targeted, more efficient and better planned than in 2016.

If that’s true, it bodes well for this election. Republicans in Lancaster County are leading canvassing efforts, while Presler’s Early Vote Action army prepares mailers and zig-zags the state with voter registration forms and “Amish For Trump” yard signs. Tricia Aulbach, one of Early Vote Action’s regional representatives, said she has personally registered nearly 200 people, using a combination of public records and voting lists to identify Amish households and targeting young adults still living at home.

“They want their quality of life preserved,” she said. “They want the freedom to do what they want in their life. They want to keep their weapon. They want pro-life (policies). They think that children are a blessing from God. Those are all things that I believe, as well.” When the election is over, Aulbach said, she plans to spend more time connecting with the Amish people in her community. “They’re our neighbors,” she said. “They are so godlike, so kind. It’s been life-changing for me.”

An Amish hero

As the 2024 election approached, the Trump world found its Amish hero: Amos Miller, the dairy farmer in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. He has become something of a folk hero for his ongoing fight with the state over his efforts to sell raw dairy goods. In 2016, the FDA discovered traces of listeria in Miller’s products; then in early 2024, after years of back-and-forth, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture executed a search warrant at Miller’s farm, and blocked him from selling raw milk.

On the Trump right, it was a clear example of blatant government overreach. Dozens of demonstrators marched outside the Lancaster County courthouse where Miller’s hearing was held. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, tweeted that Miller was just a “man growing food”: “With all of the problems in society today, this is what the government wants to focus on?”

When Presler was invited onstage during Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania this month, he made a pitch directly to Miller and his followers. “To our beautiful Amish in Lancaster in Pennsylvania and across the state, we will protect your raw milk, your dairy, your farming, your school choice, your religious freedom, your ability to have ten beautiful children per family,” he said.

Miller isn’t so sure — not publicly, at least. When I visited his farm in early October, he declined to say whether he would be voting in this year’s election. “That’s a personal choice,” he said. When asked what he thinks of the candidates, he mentioned only Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by name, the former independent candidate who dropped out and endorsed Trump. “He respects farm-to-consumer freedom,” Miller said. “We’re very excited about that. That’s always special to have those kinds of endorsements, that they respect our beliefs.”

The biggest issue for Miller, bar none, is agricultural freedom. “There’s a big concern about controlling the food supply, not just amongst the Amish,” he said. “There are concerns the farms are too highly regulated. The way it’s going now, the government wants to control the food supply.” Over the last decade, Miller has seen farms in his area shutting down “left and right,” he said. “We know it’s an important part of our culture, and we see that at risk, because the rules and regulations are too burdensome.”

Down the road, at a small store attached to her home, Lydia Fisher said she would be voting. “We need someone who loves the country, who loves conservative values,” she said.

Her husband, Amos Fisher, agreed, though he wondered, “But Trump’s “character... ” with a shake of his head.

“We hope more people would vote,” he said. “It’s important.”