NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Some teenagers are stepping up to help staff polling site during the November election.
Manhattan teenager Kai Tsurumaki, a student at Princeton, says he was worried about the election and noticed a huge issue was a lack of poll workers.
“Traditionally most poll workers have been over 60 – very vulnerable to coronavirus and complications from that,” he said. “So a lot of them are not doing it this year, and that creates this huge poll worker shortage.”
In 2016 there were a million poll workers in the United States, and it’s believed a quarter of them won’t be there this year.
To help fill the gap, Tsurumaki and others, including 16-year-old Bryan Santiago of Mount Vernon, decided to put together what they call Poll Hero.
“Young people like us are stepping up. And so, what we do is recruit high school and college students, and so far, we’ve been shattering records. We just past 30,000, which is cool,” said Santiago.
The site helps young people sign up to be a poll worker in their area.
“For me it’s just a really, really important problem we have right now. Where, if we don’t have enough people to adequately staff these polling stations, then we’ll have to shut them down,” said Tsurumaki.
Poll hero has taken off thanks to some celebrities, like Ben Stiller, who are helping to promote it.
Tsurumaki will be helping voters at a polling spot near his home around Union Square – but 16-year-old Santiago can’t.
In New York, you can’t work at the polls before you can vote.
But, other states allow teenagers to help out, which is why so many high schoolers are signing up across the country.
Santiago says he gets a lot of questions about his age.
“’Why are you doing this as a 16-year-old?’ I get a lot of questions about that. I just love politics and helping my community. That’s why I’ve been doing this since I was young,” he explains.
He was even involved in the 2016 election, when he was just 12.
Both he and Tsurumaki say they are looking to get into politics when they are older.
And Santiago may already have a head start.
“Funny story about student government. I was actually running for school president, after a failed bid last year. I won in a landslide because no one wanted to run against me,” he explains.
The 16-year-old says everyone comes to him to get things done.