Ch. 6 Test

1.  Provide a paragraph on an important issue of your choice from Section 1:
This section talks about the extending of suffrage and how there were 5 steps to getting that done. The 5 steps are: 1. Extend voting rights. 2. The 15th Amendment which was intended to protect any citizen from being denied the right to vote because of race or color. 3. The 19th Amendment which prohibited the denial of the right to vote because of sex. 4. In the 1960s the federal legislation and court decisions focused on securing African Americans a full role in the electoral process. 5. The 26th Amendment which says that no State can set the minimum age for voting at more than 18 years of age.


2.  Provide a paragraph on an important issue of your choice from Section 2:
This section talks about voter qualifications. The three main qualifications are citizenship, residence, and age. These mean that you have to be a citizen of the United States. You also have to have residence in the State you are planning to vote in. Finally you also have to be at least 18 years of age to vote.


3.  Provide a paragraph on an important issue of your choice from Section 3:
This section talks about suffrage and civil rights. This section then is talking about all the acts and whatever else was done to try and get equal rights for women and African Americans. The beginning of it all started with the 15th Amendment, which stated that the right to vote cannot be denied to any citizen of the United States because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The next big this was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which set up the United States Civil Rights Commission. The next act came in 1964 titled: The Civil rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in several areas, especially in job-related matters. The next act came the following year, The Voting Rights Act of 1965. This made the 15th Amendment a truly effective part of the Constitution because it applied to all elections held anywhere in this country.


4.  Provide a paragraph on an important issue of your choice from Section 4:
This section talks about voter behavior. When talking about voter behavior its talking about all of the non-voters in the United States. The main reason behind why so many people don't vote is because the can't. This is because they are either resident aliens, too ill or physically disabled, and people who had to travel suddenly.


5. Explain voter apathy and what can be done to help it:
Voter apathy is when a potential voter ends up not caring about an election and chooses not to vote. The Sociological factors that greatly influence this are income, occupation, education, gender, age, religious, ethnic background, geography, family, and other groups. The psychological factors that greatly influence this are party identification, candidates, and issues.




6. Explain the qualifications for registering to vote:
The qualifications are: Citizenship, Residence, and age. Citizenship means that you have to be a legal citizen of the United States in order to vote. Residence is you have to be a legal resident of the State in which you wish to cast a ballot. Age is that you need to be at least 18 in order to cast a vote, unless otherwise lowered by your current State of residence.

Political Parties

The Republican party first came to power in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency and oversaw the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Early Republican ideology was reflected in the 1856 slogan "free labor, free land, free men." "Free labor" referred to the Republican opposition to slave labor and belief in independent artisans and businessmen. "Free land" referred to Republican opposition to plantation system whereby the rich could buy up all the good farm land and work it with slaves, leaving the yeoman independent farmers the leftovers.


The Democratic Party evolved from Anti-Federalist factions that opposed the fiscal policies of Alexander Hamilton in the early 1790s.As the American Civil War broke out, Northern Democrats were divided into War Democrats and Peace Democrats. The Confederate States of America, seeing parties as evils, did not have any. Most War Democrats rallied to Republican President Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans' National Union Party in 1864, which put Andrew Johnson on the ticket as a Democrat from the South.


I plan on following the Republican party because I have grown up following them and I plan on keeping that way.

Election Results

After watching and reading all the articles there was a definite Republican takeover of the House. I am glad that there was this takeover because if all of them do like they said they were gonna do then there should be a change in government spending, taxes, and whatever else. I also like the fact that Kristi Noem made it in over Stephanie Herseth because I didn't like Herseth anyway and this time around she used a lot of attack ads mainly about one topic: speeding tickets.

As for the measures, the two main ones that I was curious about and really cared about I should say were the smoking ban and medical marijuana. I personally do not smoke and so therefore I was pleased with the passing of the smoking ban because it is annoying that almost wherever you go there are people smoking. I was unsure about the medical marijuana however because I knew that it has good uses to help people but there still are the possibilities for it to be abused.