AS WAS predicted by local political bosses, Pennsylvania's tough voter ID law was put on hold today. To the dismay of local conservative talk-show hosts, who were roaring on Lexington's hire car radio about "Judge Chickenhawk" permitting the dead to vote in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, Judge Robert Simpson ordered that a new requirement to show a valid identity card with photograph and expiry date before voting should not take effect before the elections on November 6th, for fear that legitimate voters might not be able to secure the right ID cards in time.
Your reporter, who is in Pennsylvania again researching a couple of pieces, can report that the ruling—while angering many Republicans—will be greeted with relief within at least one staunchly conservative voter block: the Amish of Lancaster County.
There are about 70,000 Amish in the state of Pennsylvania, some 28,000 of them scattered on small farms in the rolling green hills of Lancaster. With horse-drawn buggies, scooters and their own feet as their most common means of transport, the Amish have no need of drivers' licences, though many have special state ID cards bearing the inscription "Valid without Photo", reflecting their church's prohibition against photographs and other graven images. Those cards meet the new voter ID law's requirements, but are fiddly to obtain, requiring a letter from an Amish bishop and a special visit to a government office. Though only a minority of the Amish vote, those who do intend to cast ballots next month were anxious that the voter ID laws would diminish their already low turnout.
Back in 2004, when I was last posted to America, the Amish found themselves singled out for special attention by George Bush, who flew in to Lancaster County to deliver a campaign speech, attended by a fair number of straw-hatted, buggy-driving Amish. As pacifists they did not greatly care for the Iraq war, but they strongly supported the then president's conservative views on social and religious issues, as well as on gun rights (many Amish are keen hunters, especially with bows).
I went to that 2004 rally as the guest of a veterinary surgeon from Kinzers in Lancaster County, Dr Willard Stoltzfus, who tends to many Amish horses and cows in the villages near his practice. Dr Stoltzfus, a rock-ribbed Republican who is of part Pennsylvanian German heritage through his father, a Mennonite, has spent years encouraging his Amish neighbours to register to vote.
Eight years ago he kindly allowed me to join him in his battered four-wheel drive when he gave a lift to some Amish clients who wanted to attend the Bush rally. Long before dawn, we wove our way at speed through darkened country lanes to pick them up, narrowly missing several black buggies illuminated only by small red flashing safety lights. It was a memorable day, during which I learned that even rather conservative Amish often have telephones in out-houses or in special boxes mounted on poles some way from their homes (a loud bell is also fitted) and—when my British homeland came up for discussion—that the Amish are fans of the rural novels of James Herriott, a Yorkshire vet.
Passing through Lancaster County this week, two election cycles later, I contacted Dr Stoltzfus again, to ask how the 2012 election was shaping up. The Amish are not impressed by Barack Obama's policies on gay marriage, or by the state of the national debt, he reported. As before, he had let it be known locally that he would give lifts to the polls to any Amish that wanted one, and would also try to help any who might need new ID cards. What do the Amish make of Mitt Romney's Mormonism, I asked the doctor in a phone call? Do they have theological objections to the unorthodox beliefs of the Republican candidate's church, or does their own status as a rather misunderstood minority make them sympathetic to the Mormons? Neither, the vet suggested: I think they like anyone who is a Christian conservative, so they like Mormons. He suggested that if I dropped in at his animal hospital, he might be able to take me on an Amish farm visit, so I could put my questions directly.
Thus it was that I spent time yesterday afternoon in the autumn sunshine at a local Amish farm, chatting about national politics with the family patriarch, sniffing the sweet smell of cattle, hearing the sound of hammering in the family carpentry shop, and being shyly greeted by various grandchildren as they returned home from school on large-wheeled scooters, their dark, homespun trousers, smocks and straw hats offset by fluorescent safety waistcoats.
I was asked not to use my Amish host's name, and he was the only member of his church whom I interviewed: the meeting lasted an hour, while Dr Stoltzfus inspected the family's dairy cows. So this is an anecdotal blog posting, rather than a news article. But it seemed to me that some readers might like to hear even this partial account.
To start with the Mormon question. Mormons do not have the same Biblical principles as believers from other Christian churches, my host said firmly. But the Amish know Mormons as "fair and square businessmen", and have no problem with them. "They're solid conservatives." The two groups share an interest in genealogy, he added, and local Mormons had in their day helped Amish families to consult family records encoded on computer databases back in Utah.
Turnout among the Amish of Lancaster County has varied greatly over the years. "The bishops preach against it, they don't think we should vote," my host said. Then again, there were lots of things of which bishops disapproved, and not all of them were equally forbidden. Do you drive, he asked? Yes, I said. Do you absolutely always obey the speed limit, he demanded to know? Um, mostly, I replied. But not always? Well, no, I confessed. Well it is like that, he said. Some things are like speeding: they are not allowed, but the bishops are not going to bawl you out for them.
The Amish, I was told, voted in their thousands in the 1954 governor's race, when the Democratic candidate, George Leader, promised to allow Amish children to leave school at 14 to work on their family's farms: a promise that governor kept when re-elected, earning him the lasting gratitude of the community, who from time to time go to sing for him at his retirement home (Mr Leader, who is 94, still lives locally).
Local businessmen, "feed merchants and so on", encouraged their Amish clients to vote against John F Kennedy in 1960, in a bid to ward off what they saw as the threat of a Catholic president. But voting dwindled in the late 1960s, partly in reaction to the divisive public debate around the Vietnam War (which saw the Amish claim the status of conscientious objectors, causing some local anger towards their community). In part, once the Amish were allowed their own schools, there was also a sense that it was no longer their business to vote in the elections of a country that they kept at arms' length.
The Amish do follow the news, but indirectly. They meet fellow Old Order members at church and while working, and much information is spread informally. Some Amish work at local businesses, such as carpentry shops or buggy repair shops, and hear the radio while there. The more liberal listen to news headlines via a special 411 telephone number that can be reached via their outhouse telephones. Some Amish active in business are said to have mobile smartphones, and may listen to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other talkshow hosts on them, though my host frowned at such extravagant rule-bending. The community has its own newspapers, such as Die Botschaft, a weekly, but this carries its news in the form of letters from readers, and tidings of family reunions, social occasions and church meetings are given more weight than world events. "If somebody bought a farm, or had a barn fire, it gets around real quick," my host said.
He is definitely going to vote this year. "I will vote for somebody who wants to abolish gay rights," he said. He is also pleased that Mitt Romney dislikes federal rules mandating that lots of corn be turned into ethanol: a rule that he blames for high corn prices. Though his homestead is surrounded by cornfields, and bearded, straw-hatted neighbours could be seen and heard harvesting the crop with clattering, horse-drawn harvesting machines, few Amish grow enough to feed all their own cows and chickens, so on balance they are vulnerable to high market prices.
My host called himself "disgusted" by Obamacare. "We don't generally like to get involved with the government," he noted. There is no Amish prohibition against modern medicine when lives are at stake. Members of the community have their own system of insurance-like mutual risk-sharing, known as church aid, to cover big bills, which has been in place for a couple of decades in its current form.
Mr Romney, who is trailing in the polls in Pennsylvania, should not perhaps pin too much hope on the Amish vote, though. Perhaps a thousand are registered to vote, I was told.
Though I have only met a handful of Amish, they have all been good at giving the impression that they find non-Amish visitors rather comical. Taking a business card, my host noted that it lacked my home address. I wrote this on the card. "So I can come and stay when I am next in DC?" my host asked, deadpan. He also asked whether I was paid as much as a congressman, and how people became columnists for The Economist. The foreign reporter suitably disconcerted, the meeting was at an end, and my host returned to work in his carpentry shop.
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