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What Is Gerrymandering?
Learning Objective: 6-2: Identify the factors that create advantages and disadvantages in congressional electoral politics.

What Is Congressional Dysfunction?
Learning Objective: 6-2: Identify the factors that create advantages and disadvantages in congressional electoral politics; 6-4: Explain six basic problems of legislative organization; 6-5: Relate the institutional structures in the House and Senate that help members overcome barriers to collective action.

America’s Most Gerrymandered Congressional Districts
Learning Objective: 6-2: Identify the factors that create advantages and disadvantages in congressional electoral politics.
 

Video

How a Bill Become a Law
Learning Objective: 6-1: Describe the requirements and powers of Congress and how the congressional electoral system works.

The Bicameral Congress
Learning Objective: 6-1: Describe the requirements and powers of Congress and how the congressional electoral system works.

Questions to consider:

1. What are the historical reasons that the Founding fathers settled on a bicameral legislature?
2. What are the practical reasons the Founding fathers settled on a bicameral legislature?
    

The Filibuster for Dummies
Learning Objective: 6-1: Describe the requirements and powers of Congress and how the congressional electoral system works.

What Are Lobbyists?
Learning Objective: 6-2: Identify the factors that create advantages and disadvantages in congressional electoral politics.

Questions to consider:

1. Describe the important role that lobbyists play in the legislative process?
2. Why is lobbying reform difficult to pass?

 

Year of the Woman in Congress? Not So Fast
Learning Objective: 6-3: Discuss the racial and ethnic makeup of Congress.

10 Richest Members of Congress for 2014
Learning Objective: 6-3: Discuss the racial and ethnic makeup of Congress.

Gerrymandered Districts
Learning Objective: 6-5: Relate the institutional structures in the House and Senate that help members overcome barriers to collective action; 6-6: Describe what influences public opinion about Congress and its performance.

Questions to consider:

1. What does the statement “that’s not the voters choosing their representatives, that’s the representatives choosing their voters” refer to?
2. Explain the redistricting technique called “scorpions in the bottle.”
3. Why do partisan gerrymanders encourage ideological extremism?
    

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Takes on ALEC
Learning Objective: 6-5: Relate the institutional structures in the House and Senate that help members overcome barriers to collective action; 6-6: Describe what influences public opinion about Congress and its performances.

NBC News Taking the Hill: Inside Congress
Learning Objective: 6-5: Relate the institutional structures in the House and Senate that help members overcome barriers to collective action; 6-6: Describe what influences public opinion about Congress and its performances.
 

Web Resources

Demographics of the 114th Congress
Learning Objective: 6-3: Discuss the racial and ethnic makeup of Congress.

Confessions of a Congressman
Learning Objective: 6-6: Describe what influences public opinion about Congress and its performance.

Help! We’re Living in Hell and Don’t Know How to Get Out
Learning Objective: 6-6: Describe what influences public opinion about Congress and its performances.