Since 1977, the government has shut down on seventeen occasions. There were six shutdowns during the Carter Administration, all of them lasting for more than a week and one for seventeen days. There were eight shutdowns during the Reagan Administration, none longer than three days, and one three-day shutdown during the first Bush Administration. The two most recent government shutdowns occurred...in 1995 and 1996. The first lasted for five days in November, and the second for twenty one days in December and January.

The correct answer to this open question is the following.

Unfortunately, there is no question here. You forgot to include the question. It is just a series of statements.

What is the question? What do you want to know?

However, trying to help you we did some deep research and can comment on the following.

It seems that the question is "The events described in the text are examples of which political situation?"

If that is the case, then the correct answer is the following.

The events described in the text provide evidence of the following political situation: a notorious lack of cooperation between the President of the United States and the US Congress, or in other words, the US executive branch and the legislative branch.

And this mostly happens when the United President does not have a majority in Congress, in the House of Representatives, or the Senate. When this happens, it is difficult for the President to pass legislation that favors him or his political party.

In this case, they have to negotiate, but the negotiation has to think about how to benefit the United States citizens. Unfortunately, most of the time the branches do not have in mind the best interests of the citizens, but their own political and partisan interests.

The correct answer is B) Arkansas.

The state that requires minor parties to win at least 3 percent of the vote in the most recent gubernatorial or presidential election in order to maintain ballot status is Arkansas.

For example, if we take into consideration this year's elections in the state of Arkansas, we see that there were three different political parties registered to participate. We are talking about the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the Libertarian Party.