About 100 Iowa high school students were part of a last-ditch effort to get lawmakers to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work at polling places on Election Day. Sixteen-year-old Kaleb Johnson of Des Moines Lincoln high school would like to be a poll worker in November to help him understand government a little bit better. Sixteen-year-old Amanda Seelman of Clear-Creek Amana says the move to let teens help out on Election Day makes sense. She says students would be more likely to vote if they’ve already been involved in the process.Secretary of State Chet Culver says under current law, poll workers must be registered voters, which means most high schoolers don’t qualify. He says changing the law would allow nearly 40,000 young people to work the polls at a time when there is a shortage of workers.Culver says there are plenty of capable teens who could be poll workers. He says there are young people who score perfect scores on their college entrance exams and they want to help their state and community.Poll workers hand out the ballots, check voter i-ds and registrations, help voters with voting machines and count paper ballots in Iowa’s smaller counties. Republican legislators have refused to adopt any of the voting reforms Culver, who’s a democrat, has suggested, including the idea of letting high schoolers be poll workers.
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