Tuesday, March 06, 2012

March 6

We combined the two IB 30/35 classes today. Mr. Johnson lectured a bit on Harry Truman's administration, in particular his domestic policy. He will post this PowerPoint on the wiki. We started talking about the electoral college system when we looked at the 1948 election between Truman and Dewey, which Truman won. There is the famous photograph of Truman holding up a newspaper proclaiming Dewey the winner. When it came to the popular vote it was relatively close with about 2 million votes difference between Truman and Dewey, but when you look at the electoral college votes, it wasn't close between the two.

We also looked at more recent U.S. presidential elections, including the 2000 election where Al Gore won the popular vote but didn't win the right states to get the 270 electoral college votes to win. I tried to describe what a butterfly ballot looks like, but once I put up this graphic I think it helped you understand how some votes might have misplaced in the 2000 election in Florida.

We'll talk more about the American political system when we begin our review for the Alberta Social 30-1 Diploma Exam.

You wrote a quiz on the movie "The Patriot" today. I also gave you some time to work on today's homework from The United States and Its People booklet, specifically reading pages 100-113, and completing the section reviews on page 106 and 113 respectively. This homework is due tomorrow.

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