Political Parties and Elections - AP US Government

A "marginal district" is a district in which the elected representative carries less than fifty-five percent of the popular vote is said to have won only marginally. The opposite of a marginal district is a "safe seat." Because marginal districts can change hands much more easily, they receive a disproportionate focus during campaign season.

This is a straightforward vocab question. Caucus is the correct answer. Remember: caucuses are relatively active events, where participants will debate, express support, and even sometimes physically move (as in to one side of the room or another) to show which candidate they think is worthy. Caucuses were once the most popular way of picking a presidential nominee, however, states that use the caucus now are in the minority.

Closed primaries– where only those voters who have registered beforehand as party members are permitted to vote – are legally allowed as part of the political process. While many more states choose to host open primaries, which allow any citizen (unregistered included) to partake, closed primaries remain a valuable tool that some parties continue to employ. Party machines, however, with their infamous fondness for dispensing overt patronage to those citizens who demonstrate loyalty but not necessarily ability, have been done away with by a series of new regulations put in place after the turn of the twentieth century. Soft money (funds stored aside by the party leadership to later distribute freely to candidates) has been more recently banned, as part of modern efforts to reduce corrupt party practices.

In the event that none of the candidates receive the necessary number of votes in the presidential election, the president is selected by the House of Representatives and the Vice President is selected by the Senate. This process was established by the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

According to Article I, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, each state shall have two Senators, with each Senator serving a term of six years. All senators are divided as equally as possible into three "classes," which have a staggered system of when each term ends. Thus, roughly one third of all senators are up for election every two years.

The primary responsibility of a poll watcher is to ensure that the election process is fair, honest, and involves no attempts at trickery or manipulation of the voting. Poll watchers are vital part of a fair and open modern democracy because they prevent chicanery.

Because the Senate is considered the senior government body in the legislature, it makes sense that you would have to be older to serve in the Senate than in the House. The correct answer is that you have to be at least twenty-five to serve in the House and thirty to serve in the Senate. Most members are usually significantly older than this minimum threshold.

To earn an absolute majority and be elected President of the United States, a candidate needs out of an available electoral votes.

A person must be a natural born citizen in order to be eligible to be president. This means that either the person was born within the United States or was born in a foreign country and had at least one parent with American citizenship. None of the other offices require that the holder be a natural born citizen, and if a member of the Cabinet is not a natural born citizen then that person is skipped on the presidential line of succession.

The only requirements to run for the office of U.S. Representative are that one must be at least 25 years old, have been an American citizen for at least 7 years, and reside in the state that the district is in. There is no actual requirement that a candidate has to live in the district that the candidate is trying to represent, only that the candidate live within the same state. Candidates for Senate do actually have to live in the state that they want to represent.

While the Commission introduced many sweeping reforms to the political party convention system, the leaders of each of the two main parties were allowed to remain in power, so long as they agreed to cooperate with the Commission’s new restrictions. These reforms forced party leaders to make their appointments of convention delegates a matter of public record, with the entire process done with greater transparency. Party conventions underwent a similar overhaul, with new rules preventing the exclusion of minorities from the leadership and delegate levels. The states were also affected – each state was required to alter its delegate selection process so that all participants were able to be included.

In 2002, soft money (money set aside for campaigns at the grass-roots level by party members) was ruled as an illegal source of campaign contributions by the McCain-Feingold Act. Soft money is seen as unacceptable because these funds are generically collected by political parties, with no clear designated spending purpose, and so were often used as unregulated “donations” to candidates. 527 groups were declared legal by the Federal Election Commission in 2004, while 501(c) groups were established in 2010. Political action committees (aka PACs) have been legally allowed since 1974 and have experienced vast increases in popularity and usage since 2008.

While the FEC Act was intended to reduce corrupting influences within the campaign finance system, candidates are still permitted to accept funds from any large companies or unions, so long as these donations remain at or below the prescribed contribution threshold (which adjusted along with inflation). Similarly, candidates are also permitted to accept funds from private individuals, so long as these funds, too, fit within the threshold, and all donations must be reported back to the Federal Election Commission. In addition, the Act established a mechanism to provide partial funding and matching contributions to qualified candidates.

If no candidate receives a majority of Electoral College votes, then the election decision is placed in the hands of the members of the House of Representatives. The House members are charged with choosing the next president from among the top three electoral vote winners, with each state delegation possessing one combined vote amongst all their respective members. This is a very rare occurrence– the last election to be decided by the House was in 1824, between Democratic-Republicans John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

The answer is “false.” Out of everyone in the entire US at the time immediately after the Revolution, only the males could vote. Out of the males, only free white males could vote. Out of free white males, only those who weren’t Catholic or Jewish, and who had property could vote. Thus, in the beginning, only about half of the free adult male population was eligible to vote.

Coordinated expenditures is the correct answer. Coordinated expenditures, much like the name might suggest, are expenditures on behalf of—in coordination with—a candidate and her campaign. A campaign ad, for example, is a coordinated expenditure—it’s generally a ‘true’ campaign ad if it ends with “I’m XXXXX and I approve this message” or any other sort of indication that the ad was specifically approved by the candidate.

Independent expenditures is the correct answer. Similar in name, but different in substance, to coordinated expenditures, independent expenditures are expenditures that are completely separated from a campaign. Thus, a smear ad from a PAC, for example, is not a coordinated expenditure: it’s an independent expenditure. Do you see why?

During the 1960s and student activism in response to the Vietnam War, a movement arose that wanted the voting age lowered to 18 from 21. By 1971, both houses of congress ratified the 26th Amendment and it was subsequently ratified by the states.

The lame duck period does not mean that the government stops functioning until the newly elected officials are sworn into office. For the Congress, this means that the defeated or retiring Congressmen and Senators still have the opportunity to propose and vote on laws. The newly elected officials must be sworn into office before they can take any legislative action. The President may issue Executive Orders but they are not subject to the approval of state legislatures. The Supreme Court does not make laws rather they rule on the Constitutionality of the law.