Deck 11: Elections

Question 1

Almost all states in the United States allow felons and ex-felons to vote in presidential elections.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

In working toward their own self-interests, candidates usually try to reveal as much as possible about themselves.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Personal registration poses a significant burden for potential voters and decreases turnout.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Competition creates strong incentives for those vying for office to reveal information to the electorate.

Question 5

In the United States, the proportion of eligible voters actually going to the polls was considerably smaller in the nineteenth century than it is today.

Question 6

Voter turnout declined sharply around the turn of the twentieth century because a two-party system replaced the multiparty system of the nineteenth century.

Question 7

Voter turnout in the United States in the nineteenth century was significantly higher than today.

Question 8

Australia and Germany require all citizens to vote.

Question 9

Article I of the U.S. Constitution requires members of the U.S. House of Representatives to be elected from single-member districts.

Question 10

The wide use of elections is thought to keep government policy close to the preferences and interests of its constituents.

Question 11

In recent years, voter turnout in the United States has been high relative to that in other Western democracies.

Question 12

Politicians engage in many acts that do not attract public attention.

Question 13

One purpose of requiring registration was to reduce corruption.

Question 14

Moral hazard is a problem produced by hidden actions by an agent.

Question 15

Registration requirements depress the turnout rates of those with less education and income more than for those with high levels of education and income.

Question 16

The responsibility for printing ballots and overseeing the conduct of elections lies with the federal government.

Question 17

Moral hazard makes the public vulnerable to abuses of the power delegated to elected agents.

Question 18

Local decisions regarding the location and staffing of polling places can influence the outcome of elections.

Question 19

Some countries legally require their citizens to vote.

Question 20

Adverse selection is a problem caused by hidden action.

Question 21

An electoral system in which the candidate who gets the most votes wins the election is called a majority rule system.

Question 22

The single strongest predictor of how a person will vote is that individual's attachment to a political party.

Question 23

The presidential candidate who wins a plurality of the popular vote in the country wins the presidency.

Question 24

An initiative is an institution of direct democracy.

Question 25

Duverger's Law states that plurality rule systems will tend to have two-party systems.

Question 26

The adoption of the secret ballot system enabled voters to engage in split-ticket voting.

Question 27

A referendum is an election held to remove a sitting official from office.

Question 28

In the absence of strong parties, participation rates drop the most among poorer and less educated citizens.

Question 29

Over the years, the government has consistently tried to make voter registration more difficult.

Question 30

Some states have recently adopted laws requiring photo identification to vote, even though voting fraud by impersonation is extremely rare.

Question 31

The American electorate is smaller and skewed more toward the middle class than toward the population of all those potentially eligible to vote.

Question 32

State legislators in the United States today are generally selected from single-member districts.

Question 33

Some states allow registration on site at the polls on Election Day.

Question 34

The United States has always used a secret ballot system.

Question 35

American politicians have sought to influence the electoral outcome by redrawing district boundaries.

Question 36

Empirical study of legislative districts has shown that while gerrymandering does create partisan biases, the degree of bias has decreased since the 1960s.

Question 37

A ballot that lists all the candidates, typically with party affiliation, for each office is known as an Australian ballot.

Question 38

The electoral format that presents the names of the candidates for just a single party is called the Australian ballot.

Question 39

Most electoral contests in the United States are decided on the basis of plurality rules.

Question 40

In a series of decisions beginning with Baker v. Carr, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all federal and state legislative districts must have approximately equal populations.

Question 41

Most Americans identify more or less strongly with one or the other of the two major political parties.

Question 42

Generally speaking, the state of the economy has little effect on voting in presidential elections.

Question 43

The problem of incomplete information-that is, of choosing alternatives without fully knowing the details of available options-refers to which of the following?

A)hidden action
B)mitigated risk
C)adverse selection
D)moral hazard

Question 44

An issue for which all voters prefer a higher value is called a valence issue.

Question 45

The problem of not knowing all aspects of the actions taken by an elected official refers to which of the following?

A)moral hazard
B)adverse selection
C)suboptimal agency
D)unknown motives

Question 46

The problem of moral hazard arises because

A)wisdom learned in one era does not easily translate to other time periods.
B)value judgments about what is good or bad are inherently subjective.
C)representatives, once selected, cannot easily be monitored.
D)candidates are reluctant to reveal negative characteristics about themselves.

Question 47

Individuals who vote on the basis of past performance are said to be retrospective voters.

Question 48

In the 2016 presidential election, Republicans won enough seats to hold a majority of seats in the Senate.

Question 49

Over the last three decades, roughly equal percentages of Americans have affiliated with the Republican and Democratic parties.

Question 50

According to federal law, all 50 states must hold their Congressional primaries on the same date.

Question 51

In the case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court ruled that spending money in a campaign was essentially equivalent to speech.

Question 52

The answer to the problems of adverse selection and moral hazard are found partly in the fact that

A)elections work through competition, which motivates rational candidates to formulate policies that will please voters.
B)elections do not require candidates to reveal much information about themselves.
C)history matters, so candidates who have won elections before will win again.
D)when many peoples' preferences are assembled together, these small problems usually vanish due to the large numbers of voters.

Question 53

While it would be good for more voters to exercise their right to vote, it does not seem likely that increased voter turnout would alter election outcomes.

Question 54

When voters had to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016, without complete information about which policies the candidates would pursue if elected, voters experienced the problem of

A)hidden action.
B)mitigated risk.
C)adverse selection.
D)moral hazard.

Question 55

In 2008 and 2016, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton became the first African American and female (respectively) presidential candidates nominated by a major party. In both cases, these distinctive traits attracted some voters while making others less likely to support these Democratic candidates.

Question 56

According to the median-voter theorem, issue voting encourages candidate divergence.

Question 57

Before the 2016 election, there had been no real gender gap in presidential voting.

Question 58

U.S. campaigns are longer and more expensive than those of other advanced democracies.

Question 59

The 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act included a maximum limit on donations (indexed for inflation) from an individual citizen to a candidate's campaign.

Question 60

The responsibility for registering voters, printing ballots, and overseeing the voting process on Election Day lies with

A)Congress.
B)executive agencies.
C)the Federal Elections Commission.
D)local election offices.

Question 61

In addition to expanding absentee and mail-in ballots, what is a commonly adopted way to make voting easier?

A)providing ballots that are already filled out
B)offering digital ballots with video statements from candidates
C)paying voters for coming to the polls
D)opening polling places several days before "Election Day"

Question 62

The critical years during which voter turnout dramatically declined across the United States coincided with two changes in the institutions of elections. One of these changes involved

A)the introduction of the two-party system.
B)the rise of negative campaigning on television.
C)radio broadcasts at national party conventions.
D)the creation of formal registration systems and lists.

Question 63

To increase voter turnout, some countries, such as Australia and Germany,

A)have compulsory voting.
B)offer tax incentives to voters.
C)allow all teenagers to vote.
D)require employers to pay employees for their time while they vote.

Question 64

Relative to the nineteenth century, voter turnout today (as measured by the turnout ratio) is

A)more than 5 percent higher.
B)higher, but not by more than 5 percent.
C)lower, but by less than 5 percent.
D)more than 5 percent lower.

Question 65

The choice of a ballot format is usually made by the

A)state.
B)county.
C)U.S. Congress.
D)Federal Elections Commission.

Question 66

The most recent relaxation of qualifications for voting in the United States allowed __________ to vote.

A)women
B)African Americans
C)18-year-olds
D)noncitizen permanent residents

Question 67

The Nineteenth Amendment extends suffrage to which of the following groups?

A)women
B)African Americans
C)persons 18 years of age or older
D)noncitizen permanent residents

Question 68

Which of the following best explains why the turnout ratio, using voting-age population as the baseline, understates the true turnout rate?

A)The voting-age population overstates the size of the baseline because the voting-age population includes adults over 21.
B)The voting-age population overstates the size of the baseline because the voting-age population includes individuals who are ineligible to vote, such as noncitizens and felons.
C)The voting-age population understates the size of the baseline because it excludes noncitizens and felons.
D)The voting-age population understates the size of the baseline because it includes only adults who have previously voted.

Question 69

The voting age in American elections was set to 18 by the

A)Seventeenth Amendment.
B)Voting Rights Act.
C)Nineteenth Amendment.
D)Twenty-Sixth Amendment.

Question 70

Compared to other Western democracies, how extensive is voter turnout in the United States?

A)quite low
B)about average
C)just above average
D)well above average

Question 71

The challenge in measuring turnout rates is

A)processing absentee ballots.
B)defining the baseline population.
C)counting the number of individuals who present themselves at polling stations.
D)sorting out provisional ballots.

Question 72

At the beginning of the Republic, voting rights in most states were restricted to white male citizens over the age of 21 who also met which additional qualification?

A)signing a loyalty oath
B)current or previous military service
C)passing a literacy test
D)property ownership

Question 73

There are no regulations on which basic feature of elections?

A)individual donations to candidates for office
B)how political parties choose their candidates for office
C)how states design congressional districts
D)whether candidates can run advertisements on television

Question 74

In recent years, what has been the turnout rate in a typical presidential general election?

A)25 percent
B)45 percent
C)60 percent
D)95 percent

Question 75

Which two progressive reforms adopted from 1890 to 1910 led to a marked decline in voter turnout rates?

A)literacy tests and voter registration
B)Australian ballots and ballot initiatives
C)child labor laws and civil service laws
D)campaign finance restrictions and ex-felon enfranchisement

Question 76

In the past, many states imposed which of the following to keep immigrants, blacks, and other groups out of the electorate?

A)closed primaries
B)literacy tests
C)campaign finance regulations
D)machine-style politics

Question 77

The institution principle states that political rules shape political outcomes. Which of the following is a feature of election laws that shape election outcomes?

A)establishing federal guidelines for proper voting decisions
B)deciding which questions are asked at presidential debates
C)deciding who can vote in U.S. elections
D)determining the coalitions of the two political parties

Question 78

The United States is one of the most participatory democracies in the world. Which of the following is NOT a way Americans can participate in electoral politics?

A)blogging about their opinions on a candidate
B)joining an interest group or political organization
C)speaking with others about politics at a bowling alley
D)threatening to fire employees if they don't vote for the employer's preferred candidate

Question 79

State laws determine all of the following EXCEPT

A)how votes are cast (punch card, optical scan, electronic).
B)how votes are counted.
C)the date of general elections for Congress and the presidency.
D)how parties nominate candidates.

Question 80

In examining elections, the number of people who vote in a given election divided by the number of people who are allowed to vote is called the __________ rate.

A)fall-off
B)turnout
C)turnover
D)roll-off