Indiana’s Amish population could become new voting force
By Carson Gerber for Free Press Indiana News . Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration. Indiana state Rep. Joanna King grew up in an Amish family that believed voting went against their faith-based conviction that members should stay separate from the world. “They really feel like their influence needs to be praying for the people that are elected … but still really having that complete separation of church and state,” said King, whose family left the Amish faith when she was in third grade. But that long-standing belief is fading among some Indiana Amish — and it could open up an untapped block of conservative voters. More than 68,000 Amish live in Indiana — the third highest in the nation after Pennsylvania and Ohio, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. The largest communities are in LaGrange and Elkhart counties, where around 25,500 Amish live. In LaGrange County, nearly half of the 41,000 residents there are Amish. “I always tell them, ‘If you guys ever decided to vote, you’d run this county,’” LaGrange County Commissioner Terry Martin said. “And if they told
