With the Presidential election just one week away, John McCain is going after the vote of an often overlooked group: The Amish. Whether the strategy will prove to be an inspired last minute play or a final act of desperation, with McCain running behind in most battleground state polling, remains to be seen. What’s not in question however is the conservative credentials of a community that is not only against abortion as a part of their religious beliefs, but also against the use of electricity and the internal combustion engine. Particularly given their stance on abortion, the Amish are believed to almost always vote Republican when they make it to the polls. But their voter turnout is unknown given the obvious difficulties of polling a community that doesn’t believe in the use of telephones and is skittish about contact with the outside world.
Probably the main draw of the Amish vote to the McCain campaign is their geographic distribution. The majority of Amish communities are located in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, all three of which are swing states in this year’s election. However as reported by Benjamin Sarlin on The Daily Beast, the McCain-Palin campaign may have missed the horse and buggy on getting the Amish vote to the polls, with their outreach only beginning now and the voter registration deadline having passed in all three states.
You can takepart by checking out the charity website of Christian Aid Ministries, an organization set up by the Anabaptist Amish and Mennonites (who are allowed to use electricity, and I assume must have put up the website) to provide charitable relief to problems around the world in water in developing countries, hurricane relief, earthquakes and many more.
LINKS:
The Daily Beast: McCain’s Last Hope: The Amish Vote
CATEGORIES: Culture
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- Worldchanging
The Amish vote stories that are currently circulating have generated a lot of comments from readers - most who think the vote in Ohio or Pennsylvania coming down to the Amish is ridiculous - However, I live in rural Ohio. In a county which happens to have the largest population of Amish in Ohio. In the last election our county voted 70% in favor of Bush. The total population is approximately 40,000. The Amish population of Holmes County is about 19,000. Of the 18,196 registered voters it is estimated that there are about 6,000 registered Amish voters. Unofficially, the Holmes County Board of Elections would estimate that there was a 37% increase in Amish voters turnout for the 2004 Presidential election. An increase which should be credited to the free buses, which were organized by the GOP to pick up the Amish at their churches and take them to the polls to cast their vote for George Bush.
In 2004, State Rep. Tim Grendell (Republican) inserted a provision in a jury bill to exempt Amish voters from having to serve jury duty. Since the Amish do not drive, they do not get chosen for jury duty through being on the licensed drivers list and State Rep. Grendell believed that the only reason more Amish were not registering to vote was because they did not want to be selected for jury duty (like driving, publicly judging others is against their faith). He should know since during the 2004 Presidential campaign, the Ohio Republican Party organized people all over the state to visit the Amish in their homes and at their places of business to get them to register to vote. Only to be discouraged at the number of new voters (at the close of the 2004 Presidential election there were 6,000 eligible, but unregistered, Amish voters in Holmes County alone) because of the “jury duty” clause.
Now that the Amish are exempt from jury duty, the GOP has been able to register thousands of new Amish voters throughout the state of Ohio. And, since there is literally only one issue that the Amish care about, Pro-life, and with gentle prompting from the literally thousands of volunteer GOP voter registration reps (who also promises each registered voter a FREE RIDE to the polls on election day), it is certain that every Amish vote is a Republican vote.
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