Do the Amish vote in presidential elections?

A few years, people met at my place to carpool to a Tea Party Rally. I had several Amish men on my back porch taking a break from building our barn, so I asked them another one of my 1001 questions. “Do you vote?”

Noah, the Amish man that I talk about often, took the lead. “If we need to.”

“Huh? If you need to?” I asked. “You always need to.”

Noah went on to explain that they’re well aware of political views that directly affect them, and will vote in those elections. But they want very little to do with the government.

For some reason, my son-in-law asked about the Bush Stimulus checks they’d received. Did it benefit them? Noah made us all faint when he said he refused to cash it, and so did everyone he knew who was Amish. He said, “If we take from the government, we’re tied to it.” They don’t want to be.

The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 gave married couples approximately $600.00, AND $300.00 per child. The Amish have large families, and some could have made out quite nicely. Of course, I pushed the envelope again, emphasizing how much they missed out on. Noah said, “We don’t need the government. We take care of our own.”

What a role model the Amish are! Families take care of each other. The church meets the needs in their congregation. Friends pull together to make work light.

A new fiction book will come out in October that makes us wonder what this country would be like if we had an Amish president. "Not a career politician, but someone with a little old-fashioned common sense, someone who's not afraid of rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty."

Old-fashion common sense to me means taking care of family and friends, not expecting the government to...not wanting the government to. I think  someone like the fictional Josiah Stoltzfus needs to president.