UNIT II REVIEW QUESTIONS/COMMENTS
Use this discussion thread to post questions for our Unit II Review.
Feel free to answer any questions posted by fellow students. Be sure to label each question and identify which you are answering if you choose to do so.
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Sample Question:
What was the term for a citizen of a Greek city-state that did not participate or pay attention to politics?
re. Sample Question:
What was the term for a citizen of a Greek city-state that did not participate or pay attention to politics?
Answer: An Idiot.
UNIT II FR / MC HINTS:
Unit II “Political Beliefs / Political Behaviors”
FR HINTS
These are the main topics from which I will create the FR questions for your Unit II test. You will have 20 minutes to answer ONE of the FR questions from the topics listed below. Familiarity with all is a must in preparation for this portion of the test.
ÿ The Minority Majority (Define and Identify the consequences of trend)
ÿ Political Socialization (Define and Identify contributing factors)
ÿ Compare & Contrast Liberal vs. Conservative Ideology
ÿ The McGovern-Fraser Commission of 1968
ÿ The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974
ÿ The Motor Voter Act of 1993
ÿ The Elections of 1800, 1896, and 2000
ÿ The Electoral College – We will save this one for Unit III
MC HINTS
These are my notes as I was putting together the MC portion of the test.
ÿ Caucus & conventions
ÿ Political socialization
ÿ Primaries
ÿ Elections – general
ÿ Caucuses
ÿ Election Voter Act of 1993 – summary/effects
ÿ Retrospective voting
ÿ Split Ticket Voting
ÿ Political Efficacy
ÿ Presidential Nomination System – changes over the years
ÿ Voter Ideology
ÿ Most likely to vote – characteristics
ÿ “Safe Seats” / Incumbency advantage
ÿ Buckley v. Valeo, 1976
ÿ FECA, 1974
ÿ Voters least likely to vote
ÿ Paradox of mass politics
ÿ Voting predictors – whether they will vote and how they will vote
ÿ Voting and the Constitution – suffrage expansion
ÿ McGovern-Fraser Commission
ÿ Primaries vs. Caucuses
ÿ Presidential campaigns
ÿ Presidential campaign matching funds
ÿ PACs
ÿ Fundraising – See FECA
ÿ Mandate Theory of Elections
ÿ Trends in electoral history
ÿ Economic impact of elections
ÿ Presidential Primary “Frontloading”
ÿ Demographics
ÿ Census Sampling
ÿ Populations and statistics
ÿ Reapportionment
ÿ Opinion Polls – Margin of error, scientific vs. straw, universe etc
Literary digest Poll of 1936
Question: Can you please run through the importance of the 1800, 1896, and 2000 elections?
Answer:
Election of 1800: The First Electoral Transition of Power (Between Two Parties)
Background
*No primaries
*No nominating conventions
*No candidate speeches – to seek the office would diminish the character of the individual who wishes to hold it
*No reporters only slanted newspapers controlled by the repective parties
Adams – Incumbent President (Federalist) vs. Jefferson Incumbent Vice President (Democratic-Republican)
Electoral College Vote:
Adams 65, Jefferson 73, Burr 73 (was intended to be Jefferson’s VP)
= Problem with original design of Electoral College – each elector was to cast two votes
and the winner would become President, 2nd place finisher would become VP
It did not forsee the problem with parties and running a “ticket”
Constitution called for the House of Reps to break the tie; each state would get one vote;
majority needed to win – 36 ballots before Jefferson won.
This election marks the first peaceful transition of power from one group, in this case party,
to their oposition in history. It also led to the 12th Amendment and changes to the Electoral College.
Election of 1896: A Fight Over Economic Interests
Nominating Conventions used to select candidates
William McKinley – Republican
maintain gold standard – creditors, banks and businesses supported him
“In God We Trust, With Bryan, We Bust!”
use of tariffs to protest capitalists
did not actively campaign for the office – “front porch” campaign
William Jennings Bryan – Democrat
called for the unlimited coinage of silver – debtors and farmers supported him
youngest presidnetial nominee of a major party in history (36)
campaigned actively
600 speeches, 26 states, travelled over 18,000 miles
Results:
McKinley – 271 Electoral Votes Bryan – 176 Electoral Votes
Election of 2000 – See Supplemental Reading Packet: “An Election to Remember”
Significance: Continued Republican dominance of politics; highest voter turnout in history (80%)
Question (Asked by Danny Porter): Could you describe the ‘527′ IRS Tax Code. I don’t quite understand it.
Answer: 527 Groups get their name from the IRS tax code that allows them to exist hence the name. They are essentially fundraising and spending vehicles/organizations that work outside the regular campaign apparatus. They have grown to take up the slack caused by the loss of “soft money” contributions since 2002 as a result of McCain-Fiengold Campaign Finance Reform Bill. The only stipulation is that they can not have any direct control or influence from any campaign/candidate and they can spend unlimited sums of money to the benefit or detriment of a candidate/campaign.
Question: Also in Chapter 6 vocab, while defining Reapportionment, it has the ‘link to: gerrymandering’ what is gerrymandering exactly?
Answer: Gerrymandering is reapportioning legislative districts after the census to the advantage of one party at the expence of the other – it is litterally redrawing the lines of the legislative districts and results in more political power for the party that gets to do it. In other words, they can “pack” or “crack” the power distribution of the opposition and limit their power in the House of Representatives by creating such things as “safe districts” – we will go into more detail about this in Unit III.
Kautzman
Question: I was wondering if you could explain the FECA, FEC, and PAC and they differences between them (because i know they all kind of helped create each other).
Answer:
FECA was created following the Nixon scandals of the early 1970s when it was revealed that several donors had written million dollar checks to Nixon’s reelection campaign. This money was used for nefarious and illegal purposes prompting an attempt to reform the system of campaing finance. The Federal Elections Campaign Act attempted to do just that: it created the FEC to monitor matters, set limits on hard money donations from individuals to candidates, set up matching funds for presidential candidates to use public monies to finance presidential campaigns, required full disclosure of money raised and how it was spent by the candidates, parties, etc.
The FEC is a bipartisan body made up of six members (3 Republicans and 3 Democrats) and they act as the referees for campaign finance laws and interpretation of regulations affecting campaigns – FECA. They are usually ineffective becuase they are evenly split along party lines and neither party has a vested interest in making the process more fair. They like the way things are because it favors incumbents – them.
PACs are political action committees – also created by FECA of 1974. They were set up becuase prior to FECA, unions and businesses could not legally contribute to political campaigns. PACs were created as fundraising vehicles for candidates. They have been used by parties to raise large sums of money. The number of PACs and the amount of money is vertually unregulated, but they must all fully disclose where the money came from and where it went – this is called full disclosure.
Question: What was the study by Rosenberg and McCafferty?
Answer: This is not important for this unit – no worries.
OK for the free response portion….?
Could you explain the McGovern-Fraser Commission and what the Motor Voter Act did (other than increase voter registration)?
Question: Could you explain the McGovern-Fraser Commission?
Again: I feel as though I have been saying this one hundred times a day for the last week, but here goes in an abbreviated form; if you need more specific detail, look in your textbook, look in your lecture notes, or come see me in the morning:
Background: 1968 – Democratic National Convention (Chicago) AKA “The Long Hot Summer”
Inside the convention hall, the political elites were doing what they had always done, selecting a candidate for the general election. Outside the convention hall, the masses of populism were gathering. These were people from several groups that wanted to play a more integral part in the democratic processes of the Democratic Party, and they felt as though they were being shut out of the event, which they were. These people represented the following groups: the young, women, minorities, the anti-war, and the civil rights crowds. The Democratic Party boss (Mayor Daley) that controlled the city of Chicago decided to “clean up the streets” and get these trouble makers out of the area, so they called out the riot police to disperse the crowds by whatever techniques necessary. Every bit of these activities were captured by the media and displayed nightly on the evening news. Nightly viewer who tuned in to see the convention processes were treated to unarmed relatively peaceful young people, minorities, women etc being manhandled by strong-armed police dressed in riot gear. This created a bit of a PR nightmare for the Democratic Party.
The McGovern-Fraser Commission: In order to right the wrong of arresting and hassling all these groups, and as a way to increase their electoral base I might add, the Democratic Party as a result of recommendations by The McGovern-Fraser Commission, welcomed in all these groups into the party. They switched their candidate selection mechanism from caucuses (think long meeting) to primaries (think pre-elections) and allowed the young, women, minorities, the anti-war crowd, and the civil rights crowd to take an active role in selecting the Democratic nominee for 1972. This inclusion of new people into the party lurched it to “the left”, away from the mainstream electable portion of the political spectrum and they nominated McGovern (remember him? go figure). He ended up loosing in the 1972 electoral vote 520 to 17 winning only one state and the District of Columbia. Can you say “landslide” – if you don’t know what this terms means, look it up. The definition will be right next to a big picture of McGovern himself. So, back to the drawing board the Democrats went, this time to try to save the party from itself. Their solution was to create “Superdelegates”, yes it should always be said with your index, I said INDEX, finger raised emphatically in the air. “Superdelegates” would be reserved delegates for party elites and faithful Democrats that could be counted on to nominate someone that was at least kind of electable- read sane
The legacy of the McGovern-Fraser Commission is that it caused the switch from caucus to primary, made the candidate selection process more democratic, and brought new elements into the Democratic Party that have since become party mainstays of the base.
I hope this makes some sense.
Question: re. Motor Voter Bill.
Answer: Yes, it did register more people to vote because it made the process easier. People could now register when they renewed their driver’s license. The thinking behind this was that the chief reason people did not vote was that the process of registering was too difficult and cumbersome therefore if you reduced the requirements and make it mind-numbingly simple, whola (not sure how to spell this), magic cure for voter apathy.
A funny thing happened on the way to “. . .Happily Ever After”. The voter turnout rate as a percentage has actually gone down since 1993 when The Motor Voter Bill went into effect. The reason being is that it turned out, contrary to what proponent of the bill espoused, these people were NOT voting due to the difficulties in getting registered, it was due to the fact that they are non-voters and guess what non-voters do? Well, who really knows or cares what they do, but it doesn’t entail voting.
Moral of the story, if you take the laziest and apathetic part of society and make something a little simpler for them to do, do not assume that they will do it – remember who you are dealing with. Has it been effective? Yes and no. It has registered more people, but it has not cured the problem of low voter turnout in the United States; it has actually made the problem more severe.