Congress Princeton Review
Congress
• Bicameral (two-house) legislature responsible
for writing the laws of the nation.
• Congress also serves other functions, such as
overseeing the bureaucracy, consensus
building, clarifying policy, legitimizing, and
expressing diversity.
Congress
• Made up of:
• House of Representatives:
– 435 members
Senate:
-100 Members
Congress
• Every 10 years a census is taken by the federal
government to count the population to
determine the number of each state’s
congressional districts.
• Each state must then redraw its congressional
boundaries to ensure that each district is
equal in population.
Congress
• Congressional redistricting is done by each
state legislature. Therefore, the political party
in control of the state legislature controls how
the districts are drawn.
• The legislature will gerrymander the district
boundaries to give the majority party an
advantage in future elections.
Congress
• Elections for all the 435 seats of the House of
Representatives occur every two years.
– Must reside in district
– Be citizen of the state
– Be at least 25 years old
– Constituencies of representatives are small
compared to those of Senate.
– House incumbent election rates are 90 percent,
not much of a challenge.
Congress
• Elections for one-third of the Senate occur
every two years, with a senator’s term lasting
six years.
• Senate elections are more competitive.
Important Voting Rights Court
Cases
• Smith v. Allwright (1944). The denying of
African Americans the right to vote in a
primary election was found to be a violation
of the 15th Amendment.
• Wesberry v. Sanders (1963). Ordered House
districts to be near as equal as possibleenshrined the principle of one man one vote.
Important Voting Rights Court
Cases
• Buckley v. Valeo (1976). The court ruled that giving
money to a political campaign was a form of free
speech and threw out some stringent federal
regulations on fund-raising and election spending.
• Shaw v. Reno (1993) and Miller v. Johnson (1995).
Race can not be the sole or predominant factor in
redrawing legislative district boundaries.
Important Voting Rights Court
Cases
• U.S. Term Limits v. Thorton (1995). States
cannot set term limits on members of
Congress.
• Bush v. Gore (2000). Florida recount in the
election of 2000 was ruled to be a violation of
the 14th Amendment’s equal protection
clause.