Superintendent Claims Hundreds of Amish Were “Trucked In” To Vote Down a School Budget

You’re probably aware that the Amish vote much less often than non-Amish do. But a notable minority still do vote in general elections, and on local matters.

So it’s not that odd to hear of Amish people voting. But I’d never seen a story quite like this before.

In a new report, a school superintendent in New York is complaining about Amish participation in a local vote on a school budget plan – suggesting they were “trucked in” and “used” by a handful of people opposed to the budget.

The community is in Cattaraugus County, New York, specifically the Randolph Central School district. Here’s the report via The Buffalo News:

The budget season was already presenting a “perfect storm” of negative factors for Randolph Central Schools Superintendent Kaine Kelly, which led district leadership to release a budget proposal with a 19% overall increase and 40% increase in the tax levy.

What Kelly did not expect, however, was how the budget was voted down so thoroughly, 313-191.

“The unfortunate part of what we had last night was really just a couple of people who don’t want to pay any more and who are not invested in the education of the kids of this community who used our Amish community to flood the vote,” Kelly said.

The superintendent frames this as the Amish being “used”, but I’m not quite sure that’s right.

And while this story might seem strange if you just read the headline (“Budget naysayers ‘trucked in hundreds’ of Amish to down Randolph Schools’ financial plan”), I have a pretty good guess as to why the Amish may have wanted, of their own volition, to come in to vote on this budget proposal.

Why Did The Amish Come To Vote In the “Hundreds”?

Superintendent Kelly suggests that the Amish, presumably because they largely educate their children in their own schools, have no interest in the matter:

“They just trucked in hundreds of members of our Amish community to vote no, who also have no vested interest in the education of our kids,” Kelly continued.

The Amish having “no vested interest” in the public education system may be technically true in the sense that likely few local Amish children are attending Randolph Central Schools.

But is it also true that the Amish have no interest in how the school budget plan is decided?

After all, local Amish residents (the school district lines seem to clearly include a good chunk of the sizeable local Amish population) pay local property taxes, which are typically what is used to fund school budgets – and as residents, also have the right to vote locally.

And as noted above, this budget proposed a 40% increase in the tax levy. Then consider that local Amish properties are often above-average in size and value, with their farms and typically larger acreages holding much of their accumulated wealth.

That is a direct hit, and a big one too, on the Amish, which likely means an increase in thousands of dollars in annual property tax for some if not many Amish property owners.

Not to mention that the Amish are seeing no benefit from those taxes, if they’re not sending their children to the public schools. Amish property owners pay them regardless – in Cattaraugus County and in other communities around the nation – but it doesn’t mean they have to support a 40% hike.

So no wonder they decided to show up to vote – whether they were “trucked in”, to use the superintendent’s parlance, or not. It would be very strange to see the Amish come out in the claimed numbers – “hundreds” – if they didn’t have a direct interest in the outcome.

Especially the Amish, who typically aren’t all that eager to vote (unless there is a local issue in question that affects them). It’s hard to swallow that they came simply on the behest of “a couple of people who don’t want to pay any more” as Kelly claims.

Casting The Amish As Outsiders, Manipulated By A Handful Of “Opponents”

One last comment on the framing of this second quote from Kelly: “trucked in” suggests they don’t belong in this area, as if they are outsiders, and aligns with the idea that the Amish were “used”.

But being driven places is quite a normal way many Amish get about – as former driver-for-the-Amish Haley Straw has regularly documented for us here, they use Amish taxis for longer distance travel, or convenience, or safety purposes.

So it is not strange at all if the Amish were to be driven in vans or other vehicles to a the voting location. As Steven Nolt explains, that is hardly new – it’s been happening in Lancaster County, PA, for example, for decades.

Perhaps a motivated “couple of people”, in Kelly’s words, are what drew the budget to the Amish community’s attention, but perhaps not. In the end I don’t think it matters.

Ultimately, it seems to me that rather than them being some outsider group who didn’t belong in the vote, as the superintendent’s framing seems to suggest, Amish people living in the district probably had a very strong interest in exercising their right to vote against a major hike in what they have to pay in property taxes.

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