| Review Questions for Unit CE 5 in Fasttrack Civics - The Political
Process Questions about political parties: 1. What do all political parties try to do for their own candidates running for public office? 2. When a political party is recruiting new candidates, what is it trying to do? 3. When a political party nominates a candidate, what is it doing? 4. Why do political parties carefully monitor the actions of officeholders from other parties? 5. Tell two ways that political parties can educate the public about campaign issues. 6. Political parties are organized to win elections, mainly because they want to increase their influence over public _____________. (Answer choices: policy, jobs, television, land.) 7. Why do political parties try to include both liberal and conservative views?  8. Is the advice in the poster shown above something the major political parties in the U.S. try to follow, or is it bad political advice? 9. Which of these describes the political party system in the U.S.: one party system, two party system, or multi-party system? 10. What is the official written statement of a political party's views called? 11. What do "third parties" usually hope to accomplish, even if they know they will not win the election itself? Questions about political statements and the role of the mass media: 12. Political candidates and parties can say almost anything, so voters need to be careful to separate facts from _____________. (Answer choices: statistics, quantities, opinions, objects.) 13. If a news reporter always favors one political party's candidates, regardless of qualifications, we would say that he shows a ___________ for that party. (Answer choices: source, bias, sounding, reference.) 14. What is the term for false or misleading information repeated over and over in TV ads and other sources to try to unfairly influence public opinion?  15. Which of the images shown in the box above are examples of the "mass media"? 16. The mass media plays a big role in elections by informing the public about who is running for office. Tell two other ways the mass media plays a role in our election process. 17. What is the difference between an editorial and an "op-ed piece" in a newspaper? Questions about money, elections, and politics: 18. Running for public office can be very expensive. Tell two problems that this creates for candidates running for public office. 19. Why does the rising cost of running for public office tend to give special interest groups and PACS (Political Action Committees) more influence in politics? 20. The rising cost of running for public office has led some political leaders to call for campaign finance reform. What do campaign finance reform laws try to do?  21. Is the editorial cartoon above suggesting that campaign finance reform laws are needed, or that campaign finance reform laws are not needed? Questions about voting and voting patterns: 22. In Virginia, voter registration closes _____ days before the election. (Answer choices: 7, 22, 60, 89.) 23. To vote in Virginia, you must be 18 by the day of the general election, a citizen of the U.S., a resident of Virginia and a resident of your _______________ . (Answer choices: neighborhood, city, town, precinct.) 24. Tell two places you can go to register to vote. 25. Are you allowed to register by mail in Virginia? 26. Are older people generally more likely, or less likely, to vote than younger people? 27. Who is generally more likely to vote, people with higher income, or people with lower income? 28. Are people with more education generally more likely, or less likely, to vote than less educated people? 29. What are the main reasons why citizens fail to vote? 30. Is voter turnout higher in presidential election years, or in years when there are only state and local elections held? Questions about the Electoral College system: 31. What election is conducted with the Electoral College system? 32. What is the number of electors in each state determined by? 33. When voters cast their votes in the Presidential election, what are they actually selecting? 34. In the 2004 election, candidate George W. Bush won about 54 percent of the vote in Virginia. John F. Kerry won about 45 percent. How many of Virginia's 13 electoral votes did that give to George W. Bush? 35. Why do Presidential candidates tend to travel to large, heavily populated states during the months before the election? Copyright 2007, 2015 by David Burns All rights reserved www.fasttrackteaching.com/civics |