The Michigan Department of State (MDOS) announced Tuesday that staff visited seven college campuses for National Voter Registration Day, including the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Western Michigan University and Grand Valley State University.

It’s part of a much larger fall college tour that includes dozens of stops at campus welcome events, student fairs and even football games leading up to the Nov. 3 election.

MDOS says the effort is “nonpartisan (ha ha) and designed to provide voter education, register eligible voters and recruit poll workers. At some stops, mobile Secretary of State offices are also offering driver’s license, state ID and other services.

A new national survey from Tufts University’s CIRCLE and When We All Vote found college students are much more likely to identify as Democrats (62%) than as Republicans (26%). The same research found 35% of college students said their political views have moved left in recent years, compared with 14% who said they’ve moved right.

Those are national figures, not Michigan-specific numbers, so they don’t establish how students at Michigan campuses will vote. But we can guess. It’s not rocket science.

Why are Benson and her Democrat friends at MDOS using OUR TAX DOLLARS doing this Democratic get-out-the-vote initiative? Because they can. Who’s going to stop them?

Lucky for her, Benson oversees a department that has money to burn to spend this fall bringing voter- registration services straight to a demographic that favors Democrats by more than two-to-one. And, in another fun little coincidence, Benson just happens to be running for governor.

MDOS calls it civic engagement. Republicans call it awfully convenient campaign-season outreach – courtesy of the department Benson runs.