Not only did former president Donald Trump win the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania with its 19 electoral votes, but it’s likely that his victory in the Keystone state was helped by “unprecedented numbers” of Amish voters who showed up this year.
The New York Post reported on election day that the Amish were registering to vote this year in far greater than normal numbers in response to state and federal Agriculture Department raids on the Amos Miller family’s raw milk farm in Bird In Hand, Pa.
Whatever the motivation, the numbers of Amish voters were dramatically higher than in the 2020 election.
The Amish in Pennsylvania were huge in the presidential election.
In 2020, 3000 voted.
In 2024, a reported 80,000 out of 92,000 qualified voters voted.
Trump won PA by 150,000 votes.
I’ll never laugh at or make another Amish joke again. pic.twitter.com/l1rHvrYBJa
— 💯 Cary Kelly 💯 (@CaryKelly11) November 6, 2024
According to Lancaster Farming, agents from the Pennsylvania Dept. of Agriculture conducted a raid on the farm in January of this year and seized Miller’s inventory of milk products.
The Miller family farm had also been raided in 2022 by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors who were accompanied by armed federal marshals seeking to enforce a federal court order to cease and desist all meat sales.
The Amish community had rallied around Miller who cited his religious beliefs as the reason for not abiding by Food and Drug Administration guidelines.
Other Amish farmers have faced aggressive enforcement at the hands of state and federal regulators, including the owners of Golden Valley Farms in Farmville, Virginia.
These are the reasons the Amish turned out pic.twitter.com/wdXvvnAEJH
— JoanOfArc (@JoanOfArc287) November 7, 2024
The New York Post reported that the Amish community saw Trump as a candidate who favors less government intervention.
Getting out the Amish vote in such large numbers was also due, in part, to the work of conservative political activist Scott Pressler who settled in Pennsylvania in 2021.
Pressler drew upon the experiences of Amos Miller’s farm and others who had concerns about regulatory heavy-handedness as well as religious and educational freedom to register record numbers of the Amish community as voters.
In past years, Amish voter participation has hovered around 10% but this year they turned out in numbers far larger than was expected because of government overreach.
And in doing so, they delivered Pennsylvania to Trump and contributed to his victory.
Let’s hope the bureaucrats are paying attention.
I hope they learned a lesson.
Don’t mess with the Amish.pic.twitter.com/sHsLCZrUQA— SquawK (@Squawk55) November 6, 2024
A round of applause for the Amish of Pennsylvania, please !