The Amish vote is especially difficult to turn out: Believers adhere to a strict interpretation of Christianity that discourages most participation in the modern world, from technology to voting. Voting is not technically outlawed, but it is strongly discouraged by many church leaders.
Donald Kraybill, an expert on the Amish people at Elizabethtown College, said he guesses that the most generous turnout scenario would be about 2,000 Amish voters each in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
In 2004, President George W. Bush received about 1,300 Amish votes in heavily Amish Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, he said — the product of the most successful political outreach to the community in recent memory.
“George W. Bush is not Donald Trump,” said Kraybill, whom the PAC is hoping to consult (he declined to say whether he would respond to it, though he hasn’t yet).
“There’s a lot of aspects about Trump that are antithetical to Amish values and Amish beliefs,” Kraybill said. “This is a very different situation now than it was in 2004.”
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