ELECTION QUIZ
Say whether the following statements are true or false and justify your answers
1. Every president since Washington has been either a Democrat or a Republican.
WRONG Washington was elected in 1789. The two parties have dominated American
politics since 1854 when the Republican Party was founded. The first Republican
President to be elected was Abraham Lincoln, in 1860. There have been 18
Republican Presidents since. The Democratic Party -stemming from Jefferson’s
Democratic Republican Party- was founded in 1837. There have been 14 Democratic
Presidents since. There are, however, 8 third-party challengers in this election:
Constitution: Chuck Baldwin
Libertarian: Bob Barr (former US Rep., R-GA)
Green: Cynthia McKinney (former US Rep., D-GA)
AIP: Alan Keyes (American Independent Party)
PSL: Gloria La Riva (Party for Socialism & Liberation)
NAIP: Frank McEnulty (New American Independent Party)
Socialist: Brian Moore
Independent: Ralph Nader (candidate in 2000 and 2004)
2. In a presidential election, voters decide who the party nominee will be.
TRUE: this is a participatory nominating process which takes place in
primaries and caucuses throughout the presidential campaign.
3. The president’s running mate is chosen by the rank-and-file of his or her
party.
WRONG: it is the newly nominated candidate who chooses his or her
running mate. See this year’s surprise nomination of Sarah Palin.
4. To be elected, a president requires an absolute majority of the 50 states’
548 electoral votes, ie 274 electoral votes.
WRONG: an absolute majority of electoral votes is necessary but it is
since the electoral college is made up of
270
538 electors.
5. The larger the state, the more electors it gets.
TRUE, in terms of inhabitants: the most populated state, California, gets
55 electors, while the least populated one- such as Alaska, Montana or
Vermont – get 3. It is the same number as congressional representatives
(2 Senators + 1 Representative for the smallest states) and it re-assessed
every ten years thanks to the national census. The District of Columbia,
which has no Congressional representation, gets 3 electoral votes
6. To run for the presidency, one has to be 30 years old, be an American
citizen and have lived in the US for more than 10 years.
WRONG: one has to be at least 35, have lived more than 14 years in
the US, and be American-born –thus, Arnold Schwarzenegger, being
born in Austria, may not run for the presidency.
7. The President can authorize the use of troops abroad without approval
from the Congress.
TRUE: as Commander-in-Chief he can, provided he does not declare war.
Congressmen did get to vote on the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but mostly
they have to vote on the financing of military operations.
8. The President can veto a bill, but Congress can override this veto.
TRUE: in this case, a two-thirds majority is needed to override the
President’s veto.
9. Technically, the President is elected in December.
TRUE: after Election Day, on the first Monday after the second Wednesday
in December, electors assemble in their state capitals, cast their ballots,
and officially select the next President of the United States. Legally, the
electors may vote for someone other than the candidate for whom they
were pledged to vote. This phenomenon is known as the "unfaithful" or
"faithless" elector. Generally, this does not happen. Therefore, the
candidate who receives the most votes in a state at the general election
will be the candidate for whom the electors later cast their votes.
The Electoral College is a method of indirect popular election of
the President of the United States. The authors of the Constitution put
this system in place so that careful and calm deliberation would lead to the
selection of the best-qualified candidate. Voters in each state actually cast
a vote for a block of electors who are pledged to vote for a particular
candidate. These electors, in turn, vote for the presidential candidate.
10. The President takes office on January 1st following the election.
WRONG: on January 20th, this is Inauguration day. The president-elect is
sworn in.
11. Senators serve 6-year terms. Half of the Senate will be re-elected in
November.
WRONG: they do serve a six-year term, but one-third of the Senate is up
for re-election every two years. The House of Representatives, on the
other hand, is entirely renewed every two years.
⇨ Explain the “winner-take-all” system
The candidate who wins in a state is awarded all of that state’s Electoral College
votes. Maine and Nebraska are exceptions to this winner-take-all rule. They say the
candidate “carries” such and such a state.
⇨ Is it possible for a President to be elected with fewer popular votes than his or her
rival?
Under this system, it is possible for a candidate to have the plurality of the popular
vote and yet win less than 270 electoral votes. In 2000, this is what happened with
Al Gore- Lieberman had 50,996,582 votes, while Bush-Cheney had 50,456,062.
Yet Bush-Cheney won the election with 271 electoral votes vs. 266 for the
Democrats.
⇨ What is a “swing state”?
Also called a “battleground state”. It is a state in which the electoral outcome is
undecided. They may have swayed between Republican and Democratic candidates
(=voted one way or another) in previous elections. Therefore they are the ones
candidates tend to spend the highest amounts of money in, tour the most frequently
and woo voters to the very last minute. Together in this election they come up to
129 electoral votes. Among them one may quote Florida (27 electors), Ohio (20),
Michigan (17), North Carolina (15), Wisconsin (13), Colorado (9), etc. Interestingly
McCain has decided to withdraw from Michigan, a state his campaign advisers have
decided they cannot win. See this New-York Times article:
DENVER — Senator John McCain is giving up on his efforts to win the state of Michigan,
his campaign said Thursday, in the latest sign that the faltering economy has reshaped the
presidential race and cost Mr. McCain support in crucial states.
Ceding Michigan is a major blow to the McCain campaign, which had spent heavily on
television commercials there and where Mr. McCain had campaigned repeatedly in the hopes
that he could appeal to enough blue-collar voters, so-called Reagan Democrats and
independent voters, to bring the state back into the Republican column in November.
But as the rippling financial crisis shook up the presidential election, and Mr. McCain’s
somewhat unsteady response to it appeared to cost him support in a number of recent polls of
battleground states, his campaign decided to pull out of Michigan and redirect its resources to
other swing states where they felt Mr. McCain had a better chance.
The McCain campaign has spent nearly $8 million on ads in Michigan, according to the
Campaign Media Analysis Group, a company that monitors political advertising, and now it
has no more plans to advertise there, campaign officials said. And Mr. McCain canceled a
visit he had planned to make to Michigan next week.
Mr. McCain had long made it clear that the state was central to his presidential hopes,
returning there to campaign again and again and bluntly telling a crowd at a factory in
Belleville this July that “the state of Michigan, as it has in many elections in the past, will
determine who the next president of the United States is.” His campaign announced its retreat
on a day that the news of his ceding the state was almost sure to be drowned out by the buzz
created by the much-anticipated vice-presidential debate.
The McCain campaign’s withdrawal will free the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack
Obama, to redirect some of his resources from Michigan to several states that President Bush
won in 2004 but where recent polls show Mr. Obama gaining ground, including Florida,
Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia...
New York Times, 2008/10/03