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Government overreach could prove pivotal in a battleground state as concerns over Vice President Kamala Harris motivated a traditionally uninvolved voting bloc behind the former president.

(Video: Fox News Digital)

While many Americans backed their ballot choices based on the desire for smaller government and to be left alone, Amish communities have, to varying degrees, live a lifestyle detached from commonplace intrusions. Now, after Pennsylvania had been decided by roughly 80,000 votes in 2020, the approximately 90,000 Amish-Mennonites in the commonwealth were expected to have an impact as “they’re becoming much more engaged politically than their parents were.”

Such was the assessment of Pennsylvania Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R), Congress’ first Amish-born member, as he spoke to Fox News Digital about voters in his Lancaster County district.

“You have a minority of the Amish who are now farming, agricultural. They’ve ran out of the land in Lancaster County a long time ago. So, there’s a new generation of Amish who are business owners,” he explained, detailing how 1,500-2,000 new Amish voter registrants had been added in his district during the previous presidential race and he expected this cycle to add “thousands more.”

“The Amish love President Trump…they want to be left alone,” Smucker told Fox News Digital as he pointed to religious liberty, smaller government, national security and the economy as key issues of concern for the ethnoreligious group.

“It’s the idea of strong individual responsibility, a strong family unit and then a strong local community or local church. And when you have all of that in place, you don’t need a big government,” he said. “And that’s exactly how the Amish look at that.”

Along with the congressman’s analysis of motivations in his district and in Amish communities throughout Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin among others, get-out-the-vote activist Scott Presler routinely shared his efforts toward registering the Amish to vote, particularly in Pennsylvania.

Last week he’d noted on X, “Our work is even more effective than we realize…Democrats really hate me…[and] Democrats don’t want the Amish to vote.”

Smucker was specifically asked about the investigation of Amos Miller, who’d had his property raided when the government attempted to tamp down on the sale of raw milk on his farm. The congressman explained that it was only one example of many intrusions by the government as he told Fox News Digital, “Yes, Amos Miller was a good case of that. But there are plenty of others that the Amish can point to as well.”

After former President George W. Bush, who’d become only the second president to visit Lancaster at least twice during his term after President George Washington, Trump was credited by Fox News as one of two former presidents to have “actively canvassed the community, which by and large doesn’t vote due to customs surrounding privacy.”

Kevin Haggerty
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