LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — On a recent weekday afternoon, an Amish man navigated a horse-drawn buggy through a busy intersection of vehicular traffic in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, passing a billboard that read: “Pray for God’s mercy on our nation. ”

The billboard featured a large image of a wide-brimmed straw hat often worn by the Amish. If there was any doubt about the target audience, the smaller lettering listed the sponsor as “Fer Die Atische” – referring to the Amish in their Pennsylvania German dialect.

Researchers say most Amish do not register to vote, reflecting the Christian movement’s historic separatism from mainstream society, just as they have retained their dialect and horse-and-buggy transportation.

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But a small minority voted, and the Amish are most numerous in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania. So this year they are the target of the last decades of efforts to register more of them to vote.

Republicans are seeking their votes through billboards, advertisements, door-to-door canvassing and community meetings. Republican campaigners see the Amish as receptive to Republican Party talking points — smaller government, less regulation, religious freedom.

“They just want the government to keep out of not just their businesses, but their religion,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., whose district includes Lancaster County, in the heart of the country’s largest Amish population. the country. Smucker, whose own family background is Amish, predicted a dramatic increase in the number of Amish voters, “and based that on the enthusiasm that we’re seeing.”

Most Amish don’t vote, but in a swing state every vote matters
But while such efforts could see an increase, don’t expect the Amish vote to dramatically change the Keystone State’s results, said Steven Nolt, director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County .

“In most Amish history and in most Amish communities today, Amish people don’t vote,” he said. “They haven’t voted, they’re not voting, and I think it’s safe to say we wouldn’t expect them to do so in the near future.”

But Amish in a handful of settlements in Lancaster and elsewhere have voted, typically less than 10% of the population, Nolt said. He has overseen post-election analyzes of voter registration trends in areas with significant Amish populations – painstaking research that involves hand-checking voter rolls and church directories and that cannot be conducted in real time during elections.

There are currently about 92,000 Amish of all ages in Pennsylvania, according to the Young Center’s research, which is based on a number of sources, including almanacs, newspapers and telephone directories. About half are in the Lancaster area and the rest are spread across the state.

But in a community with many children, fewer than half of the Amish are eligible to vote, Nolt said. In 2020, he estimated that about 3,000 Amish voted in the Lancaster area, and several hundred elsewhere, he said.

“Even if we were to imagine, for example, that there was a huge percentage here in Lancaster, in percentage terms, we’re looking at several hundred to perhaps a thousand additional voters,” he said.

By itself, that can’t come close to flipping a state that went for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by about 80,000 votes.

Of course, the Amish are not the only religious or ethnic constituency being courted by candidates. “In a context where every vote counts, every vote counts,” Nolt said. “But no, we are not talking about tens of thousands of Amish votes.”

Still, Smucker is optimistic about increased turnout. He said Republican messages resonate with a changing Amish community.

“It used to be more agricultural, but they’ve been out of land in Lancaster County for a long time,” he said. Only a minority still works in agriculture, and many start small businesses, where the Republican emphasis on limited regulation is attractive. Moreover, he said, the Amish community views Republicans as friendlier to religious freedom and opposed to abortion.

He said Amish tell stories of how their ancestors became more likely to vote in the 1950s during controversies over school attendance policies, but that the practice has since declined.

Wayne Wengerd, state director of the Ohio Amish Steering Committee, which manages relations between Amish community leaders and government officials, remembers registration efforts going back as far as the 1960s. Get-out-the-vote activists “go after anyone and everyone they think they can convince to vote for their party,” he said. “The Amish are no different.”

Amish theology keeps the church separate from the government
But most Amish avoid voting in accordance with the “two kingdoms” theology, which places a strong separation between the earthly government and the church, with an emphasis on a heavenly kingdom. They see themselves “first and foremost as citizens of another kingdom,” Wengerd said.

But, he noted, some are still voting. “The Amish are just like any other people,” he said. “Not everyone thinks the same.”

Rural Lancaster County has voted Republican for generations, Nolt said, so it’s not surprising that every Amish who does vote is influenced by the preferences of their neighbors. Most Amish voters register as Republicans, he said. .

An advertisement in a Lancaster-area newspaper, attributed to an anonymous Ohio “Amishman,” said that refusing to vote would violate the Bible by failing to “stand against evil,” while “all the good that our nation stands for is being destroyed.” A voicemail message seeking comment left with the phone number in the ad was not returned.

Nolt said this ad appeals to a theology that is more similar to that of mainstream Reformed Protestantism, which says Christians have a duty to God and country, than to the traditional Amish theology of the two kingdoms.

“It’s very different from anything in historical Amish documents, which would have said the responsibility of the church is to be the church,” he said.

Nolt said a letter sent to Amish residents did call for voting Republican but did not appear particularly targeted at the Amish, citing issues such as immigration.

The widespread support for Trump among conservative Christians of all stripes has long baffled observers, given his casino ventures, sexual assault allegations and vulgar public statements.

However, Nolt said that compared to the Amish’s separatist lifestyle, neither presidential candidate looks much like them — a reason why most of them don’t vote. “Donald Trump’s life is very different from that of an Amish person, but so is Kamala Harris,” he said.

Associated Press religion reporting is supported by the AP’s partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.