Name: ___________________________________________ Mod: ________

Date: _______ / ________ / 2011 U4.Review: Part 2

Objective: Students will review vocabulary and content from Unit 4 in order to master the Unit 4
Assessment.
Warm-Up
Gerrymandering is the deliberate manipulation of political borders (in many countries, specifically the
"electoral district boundaries") for short-term electoral advantage, usually of incumbents, or politicians
who are already in office.

The term is named for an early Massachusetts Governor, Elbridge Gerry. Two reporters were looking at
the new election map and one commented that one of the new districts looked just like a salamander. The
other retorted that it looked like a Gerrymander. The name stuck and is now used by political scientists
everywhere.

One form of gerrymandering occurs when the boundaries of a constituency are changed in order to
eliminate some area with a high concentration of people who vote for a certain political party. Another
form occurs when an area with a high concentration of voters for a certain party is split among several
districts, insuring that the party has a small majority in several districts rather than a large majority in
one. Often, such gerrymandering is thought to equalize a long-overlooked imbalance, as when creating a
black majority district.

Which form of Gerrymandering is worse and why?

Introduction to New Material

There are three levels of government:

_____________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________

Each level is responsible for different things:

Recycling Armed Forces Taxes
Making Laws Elections Drivers Licenses
Metros Standardized Tests Peace Treaties
Libraries Unemployment Benefits
 Place them under their proper level of government!
Local State National

We focused on two different branches of government:

_______________________________________ __________________________________________

The bicameral legislative branch has two houses: 1) ________________________ of _________________________________

and 2) ______________________________.

The House of Representatives has _______________ members.

The Senate has _______________ members.

• The House of Reps was put in place to protect __________ states by giving them __________ representation
on a proportional basis.
• Members of the House of Representatives serve for __________ years.
• The Senate was created in order to protect __________ states by giving them __________ representation.
• Members of the Senate serve for __________ years.

• Together, Congress is responsible for the following things.

– Passing the _____________
– Declaring war
– Regulating trade
– Coining money
• Both bodies work together to make ________.

PASSING LAWS
In the Senate and House of Representatives a law must pass through a _____________________(a smaller group
of knowledgeable politicians), to a _____________________ (a larger group of hopefully knowledgeable
politicians), to the _____________________ (a much larger body of both knowledgeable and hopelessly clueless
politicians). At each stage, a vote is taken and a bill can ‘die’ at any point. If it passes out of the House and
the Senate, it has to be reconciled at the _____________________Committee—where members of the Senate
and House check the bill for differences that need to be addressed. Their goal is to make both versions
into one. If they reconcile the bills, then the final version is voted on by both _____________________ again. If it
passes, then it goes to the ____________________, who can veto or sign the bill into law.

POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT

Signing bills into law or vetoing them are not the only powers of the President. In fact, there are four
distinct categories of Presidential Powers:
Head of State Legislative

Administrative Commander in Chief

Match the pictures with the appropriate category of power. Write the name of the category under, or next
to, each picture.

Write the name of the category that matches with each description on top of the description.

HOW IS THE PRESIDENT ELECTED?

Through the _____________________—a complex mechanism that determines the winner based on their ability
to win ______________, with each state being assigned a point value otherwise known as its Electoral College
 votes. All in all, a candidate has to win _________ Electoral College votes in order to become President.

Electoral college votes are the point value given to each state.

Why? Because you have to add the number of House Representatives to the number of _____________________.

Each state gets ______ Senators, while the number of representatives they get is based on
______________________________________ ____________________________________________.

Proportional representation is the concept that a state receives the number of representatives that is
based fairly on the number of citizens in that particular state.

Pretend that a state gets 1 representative per every 2 people in it. How many do the groups get
below?

____________ ____________
____________

HOW DO WE DETERMINE THE POPULATION?

Through the ________________________________________________!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Does that mean that the census is used to determine the number of Representatives that each state gets?

What is the process called for determining the number of representatives that each state gets?

• Every 10 years, the census is taken in order to determine how the 435 seats of the House of
Representatives will be proportionally (or fairly) distributed to the states.

REAPPORTIONMENT
• What happens after reapportionment? A process called ___________________ occurs.
• Redistricting is the process of changing the __________________ that encompass an electoral district—a
place where voters live.
• We live in ________________, which means that we vote for a representative that represents only the
people living inside of their district.
• Our Representative is __________________.

This is our district. We live in district ______________.

• In most states, the ____________ legislative branch is responsible for redistricting.
• Because Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature can try to help their political party on the
_____________ level by __________________, or illegally changing district boundaries to benefit political
candidates.

HOMEWORK