With widespread reports that young voters are uninspired by President Joe Biden, Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson headed to Battle Creek on Tuesday to get them engaged.

“It’s been incredibly inspiring to connect with the next generation of voters in our state and help them see their power,” Benson told WWMT. “I want them to know how to exercise that power, how to cast their votes, especially in a state like ours … we go through the process so they understand their options, their vote, and how important their voice is.”

The second-term Democrat partnered with local branches of the NAACP and League of Women Voters to host a mock election at the McQuiston Learning Center, recruit teen poll workers, and solicit entries for the state’s “I Voted” sticker competition.

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The event allowed students to participate in a simulated primary election through the roles of election worker, candidates and voters, learning how ballots are cast, collected and counted, according to the Battle Creek Enquirer.

“We’ve done different things with the schools and with Battle Creek Central in civic engagement,” Sue Rosko, with the League of Women Voters, told the news site. “Getting kids to really recognize how important it is for them to register to vote and to learn what’s on the ballots, that’s a huge push.”

Registering teens to vote has taken on a heightened importance as President Biden continues to struggle to court young voters in the run up to the general election in November.

CNN noted in late April “young voters are part of Democrats’ natural base of support, but Biden is actually 11 percentage points behind Trump among young voters 18-34 in a head-to-head match in a CNN poll conducted by SSRS.”

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Much of the opposition stems from Biden’s handling of Hamas’ ongoing war against Israel, though they’re more unhappy with the direction of the country in general than other age demographics.

Biden’s “worst issue approval rating – for his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza – yields 28% approval to 71% disapproval, including an 81% disapproval mark among those younger than 35 and majority disapproval among Democrats (53%),” CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta wrote.

A staggering 68% of young Americans consider Biden’s presidency a failure, while 62% are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, according to the poll data.

Harvard University’s Institute of Politics detailed similar results in its annual Spring 2024 Harvard Youth Poll conducted in March, which surveyed 2,010 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.

A mere 9% of those polled believe the country is headed in the right direction, while 58% believe it’s “off on the wrong track,” and 32% were unsure.

Only 31% told pollsters they approve of President Biden’s job performance, down 4% from the fall.

As the wildly liberal Slate noted in recent analysis, “a mere 5-point drop in support from 18-29 year-olds holding everything else constant from 2020 including youth turnout, is enough to torpedo Biden’s campaign.

“If you drop youth turnout 5 points from FiveThirtyEight’s estimate of 46 percent to 41 percent, Biden can only afford to shed 1 point of support from that group before Donald Trump once again wins the Electoral College and becomes our president.”

Benson is among Michigan Democrats working overtime to prevent that from happening, with plenty of taxpayer funded help from her office and the Biden administration.

In March, Benson inked a memorandum of agreement with the Biden’s U.S. Small Business Administration to allow the SBA to actively register voters in Michigan until 2036, fueling suspicions the initiative is mainly focused on targeting likely Democratic voters.

That effort is in addition to another that will leverage Michigan’s U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs sites to funnel voter registration information to veterans and their families.

“It appears that this is an attempt to improperly involve the federal government in America’s electoral processes,” members of the House Committee on Small Business wrote to Biden’s SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman last month. “Elections are for the American people to engage in, not for federal agencies to interfere with during an election year.”