JACKSON -- Missouri Secretary of State Bekki Cook looked for voters instead of votes during a visit Friday to Jackson High School.

Cook met with students from the school's social studies classes as part of the Missouri First Vote program.

The program encourages high school students to register to vote.

Cook said several thousand students across the state will register to vote this spring.

Cook handed out voter registration forms at two morning assemblies at the high school. Sixty-six students signed up.

Forty of them signed up at the first assembly. One of them was high school senior Molly Bishop.

"I had already been thinking about registering," the 18-year-old said.

Bishop said she was glad she could register at school rather than have to make a special trip to the county clerk's office in Jackson.

"I do think it is important to vote," she said.

But she said high school students often don't think about voting. "People my age are more worried about having fun and playing their sports."

Bishop and the other new registered voters will be able to cast their first votes in the August primary election.

Cook didn't have to preach her sign-up message to Craig Hutson.

The school's student body president registered to vote Nov. 24, a day after he turned 18.

"I grew up around politics," said Hutson. His father, Charles Hutson, is Cape Girardeau County's circuit clerk.

Craig Hutson said many students don't appreciate the right to vote.

Students, 17 1/2 years of age or older, can register to vote. They can't vote until they turn 18.

Cook, Missouri's chief elections official, spoke to students in the auditorium of what was once a grade school. The building is now part of the high school complex.

Cook attended the school when it was a grade school. She graduated from Jackson High School.

Missourians, ages 18 to 23, are the least likely to vote, Cook said.

Nationwide, one out of every five 18-year-olds voted in 1994.

More than 100 students attended the 9 a.m. session at Jackson High School. Only a handful of them had registered to vote prior to Friday's program.

It wasn't until 1971 that the U.S. Constitution was amended to give 18-year-olds the right to vote.

Cook said many young people feel that their votes won't count.

But she said that isn't true. In the past three years, some elections have been won or lost by a single vote.

In one case, a school district needed to pass a bond issue to stay afloat financially. The bond issue lost by a single vote. The district closed its high school. The students were sent to other schools.

"One vote could have made a difference," said Cook.