GOP court the Amish vote

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GOP invites Amish onto the bandwagon
Few vote, but they tend to be Republican and live in key states.

By Lara Jakes Jordan
Of The Associated Press

BIRD-IN-HAND | The Amish traditionally live without electricity, cars, telephones, and usually, without voting. But they are being sought out this year as Republicans try to sign up every possible supporter in presidential battleground states.

Amish almost always side with the Republican Party when they do vote — making them an attractive, if unlikely, voting bloc in the neck-and-neck campaign between President Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry. A majority of the nation's Amish lives in key swing states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

''Pennsylvania and Ohio are just absolute battleground states, and to think that the Amish could weigh in to the tune of thousands of votes that are clearly going to be Republican — that could be very significant for Bush,'' said Chet Beiler, a former Amish man who has been dropping off voter registration forms at Amish businesses and farms in hopes of signing up 3,000 new voters.

As pacifists, most Amish avoid political activity that they believe would link them even indirectly with government-sponsored violence. But hot-button social issues, coupled with prompting from people like Beiler, are galvanizing some Amish to register to vote.

''We hate that abortion issue,'' said Sam Stolztfus, 60, an Amish farmer and gazebo maker in Lancaster County, where an estimated 27,000 Amish live. ''We're totally against it. And as far as gay issues, that's completely contrary to the Bible.''

Stolztfus proudly says the Amish are ''sort of swept up with Bush fever.''

''You could hold up a dead mouse with a sign 'I love Bush' and we'd still probably think twice about stomping that mouse underfoot,'' he said.

An estimated 180,000 Amish live in 28 states and Ontario. They are part of a reserved, Christian subculture who descend from Swiss Germans and settled in Lancaster County in the early 1700s as part of William Penn's ''holy experiment'' in religious tolerance.

''Their basic political inclinations are traditional and conservative,'' said Don Kraybill, a sociologist of Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster. ''Although the Amish are not politically active, they make an enticing target for Republicans, politically, because they are likely going to vote Republican.''

But experts believe fewer than 10 percent of Amish citizens ever vote, and the prospect of them turning out in great numbers in November is ''not going to happen,'' Kraybill said. ''These things occur gradually, over 30 to 40 years.''

Democrats have all but ceded the Amish vote to the GOP.

''If I know Republicans and their grass-roots operations, they'll spend most of their time trying to phone bank the Amish,'' said Kerry spokesman Mark Nevins.

Not all Amish are comfortable with the Bush administration — particularly the president's decision to invade Iraq. But John Fisher, who welds iron products in Lancaster, said Bush's ''focus on the family'' will win his vote.