Voting Rights & Amendments
This term refers to all people entitled to vote in an election.
What is the electorate?
This “clause” allowed poor white voters to bypass literacy tests if their grandfathers could vote.
What is the Grandfather Clause?
This act created national voting standards and made polling places accessible to people with disabilities.
What is the Help America Vote Act?
In this model, voters choose the candidate who best serves their own interests.
What is the Rational Choice Voting Model?
This term describes the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast ballots in an election.
What is voter turnout?
Evangelicals are known for supporting which political ideology in the U.S.?
What is conservatism or the Republican Party?
A voter examines policy positions on healthcare and taxes before voting. Which model is being used?
What is Rational Choice Voting?
This amendment gave Black men the right to vote.
What is the Fifteenth Amendment?
These Southern primaries excluded African Americans from participation.
What were White Primaries?
Also called the “Motor-Voter Law,” this act aimed to increase voter registration by allowing registration when applying for a driver’s license.
What is the National Voter Registration Act?
This model describes voters looking backward at a candidate’s past performance.
What is the Retrospective Voting Model?
These ballots are used by voters unable to attend polls in person.
What are absentee ballots?
Catholics historically aligned with this political party, especially in urban areas during the 19th and 20th centuries.
What is the Democratic Party?
Voter ID laws and registration deadlines are examples of what kind of voting obstacles?
What are structural barriers to voting?
This amendment lowered the voting age to 18.
What is the Twenty-Sixth Amendment?
Name one structural barrier that historically denied African Americans the right to vote.
What are poll taxes, literacy tests, or white primaries?
This act banned literacy tests and authorized federal oversight in areas with discriminatory histories.
What is the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
This model describes voters looking ahead at a candidate’s promises and potential impact.
What is the Prospective Voting Model?
These “fail-safe” ballots allow people whose registration status is uncertain to vote provisionally until verified.
What are provisional ballots?
Today, Catholic voters are best described as this type of group due to their internal diversity.
What is a swing or divided voting bloc?
A 20-year-old voting for the first time in a congressional midterm is participating in what kind of election?
What is a midterm election?
This amendment granted women the right to vote.
What is the Nineteenth Amendment?
This 1915 Supreme Court case struck down Oklahoma’s Grandfather Clause.
What is Guinn v. United States?
This 1957 law was the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, focused on protecting voting rights.
What is the Civil Rights Act of 1957?
This model involves voters consistently supporting candidates from one political party.
What is the Party-Line Voting Model?
This type of ballot, first used in Australia, lists all candidates and is printed at public expense.
What is the Australian ballot?
Jewish Americans make up roughly this percentage of the U.S. electorate.
What is 2%–3%?
A political scientist studying a group of voters motivated by shared concerns about climate change is studying what concept?
What are voting blocs?
A 19-year-old college student votes for the first time in 1972. Which recent amendment allowed that?
What is the Twenty-Sixth Amendment?
A state passes a law requiring voters to pass a “civics understanding” test before registering. Which historical tactics does this most resemble?
What are literacy tests designed to suppress minority voting?
After the Supreme Court weakened Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, some states enacted stricter voter ID laws. What effect did this have on minority turnout?
What is a decline in minority voter turnout, increasing the racial turnout gap?
A voter chooses not to support the incumbent mayor because the city’s roads worsened during her term. What model of voting does this demonstrate?
What is Retrospective Voting?
Why is voter turnout usually lower in midterm elections than in presidential elections?
Because there’s less public interest, lower media coverage, and no presidential race to drive participation.
Jewish voter turnout is consistently around 80–85%. What does this suggest about their level of political efficacy?
They have a high sense of political efficacy—believing their participation makes a difference
If African American voter turnout declines in states once monitored under the Voting Rights Act, what conclusion might political scientists draw?
That reduced federal oversight allowed the reemergence of discriminatory practices limiting turnout.