Youths make up 10% of Trumbull poll help

Ten percent of poll
workers this election were high school seniors.

WARREN — At a time when election boards around the state are having increasing difficulties in finding enough poll workers for election day, Trumbull County appears to be heading off the problem by recuiting high numbers of high school students, an area representative for the Ohio secretary of state’s office says.

Ronald J. Massullo, liaison for Trumbull, Mahoning, Columbiana, Ashtabula and Carroll counties, said officials with the secretary of state’s office have been impressed with the Trumbull County success in getting high school seniors to work the polls since Ohio law allowed it in November 2006.

Kelly Pallante, Trumbull’s elections director, said high school seniors made up 10 percent, or around 107, of the poll workers in this month’s general election.

“Nobody used it this much in the counties I serve, I can tell you that,” Massullo said.

Pallante said it is important to recruit poll workers from all walks of life because fewer and fewer people have the available time to work the polls. That is apparently because there are many fewer stay-at-home moms than in years past, she noted.

Ohio allows youths age 17 and older who are high school seniors to miss school on election day with permission from their school to work the polls. They earn $125 for election day and two training sessions beforehand, Pallante said.

Trumbull elections workers have visited many of the county’s high schools since 2006 to encourage participation. Pallante also recently met with school officials to re-emphasize the program, and she plans to have follow-up visits at certain schools in the coming months.

The elections board met Friday to rule 96 provisional ballots invalid. A total of 597 people voted Nov. 6 on on provisional ballots, which are paper ballots filled out by voters not eligible to vote in the normal way. Provisional ballots are those cast mostly by people who move into a precinct or fail to change their voter registration location within 30 days of an election.

Trumbull’s elections board will scan the remaining 501 provisional ballots sometime next week and certify the results of those and all other election results at a 3:30 p.m. meeting Nov. 27.

Among the reasons for rejecting provisional ballots are failure to provide identification (24), voting in the wrong precinct (35), voting despite not being registered (35) and failing to provide a signature (2).

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