#24 - Families with underage children make up much of the

[Administrator]

Complete question explanation.

Assumption question. The correct answer choice is (E).

The conclusion is that underage children would receive fair representation if their parents were given additional votes to cast on their behalf. The premise is that lawmakers currently pay too little attention to the interests of families with underage children, because those children can't vote.

Answer (A) - The author doesn't necessarily think attention needs to be directly proportional, they just think increased voting would increase attention to some degree, so this is not a necessary assumption.

Answer (B) - The author doesn't rely on this assumption - they are advocating for a blanket rule to allow parents to vote on their underaged children's behalf. So this cannot be correct.

Answer (C) - "Best interests" and "fair representation" are not necessarily the same thing. Parents likely will vote in their children's best interests, but that doesn't mean they are 'fairly representing' their underaged child, who will likely have very different ideas about what types of laws they would want enacted (no bedtime! ice cream for dinner!). This is not a necessary assumption.

Answer (D) - On the contrary, the author believes that voting is key to getting lawmakers to favor a group's interests, which is why they are trying to allocate more votes to families.

Answer (E) - This is the correct answer.
Using the negation technique, if people couldn't be fairly represented when someone votes on their behalf, then the author's conclusion would make no sense. Kids wouldn't get fair representation, because it would be impossible for someone voting on their behalf to provide this service.

[kcho10]

Hi. Why is D incorrect? Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

The short answer to that one, kcho, is that D is not the credited response because E is a better answer! The instructions are to pick the best answer rather than one that is good or that works, right?

Now I know that's not a very satisfying response, and I don't mean to be flip about it. While D is attractive, it's important to only call it a contender at first look, not a winner until you have determined that it is better than all the other answers. When you get to E you should think "well that's even better than D", and that in itself should be enough to select E over D without any worry.

So what's wrong with D, that makes it worse than E? First, in order to identify an assumption built into a claim that something IS fair (the conclusion is about something being fair, not something being unfair), you should prefer an answer that talks about being fair instead of one that talks about being unfair. The author need not assume that one thing is unfair in order to claim that the opposite of that thing is fair. They could both be fair! Isn't that annoying? It's like the law in that regard - sometimes two opposing outcomes can both be considered fair. If I flip a coin, is it fair that it comes up heads when I predicted heads? Sure. Is it fair that it comes up tails when I predicted heads? Still yes!

Now try our favorite tool for Assumption questions to answer E. What if people CANNOT be fairly represented when some people in that group get to vote for others? That would wreck this argument that the families would get fair representation, and that is exactly what you want to see in the correct answer to an Assumption question - the negation wrecks the argument.

Give that a try with answer D and you will see that the negation has no impact on the conclusion of the argument. Saying that one thing is fair won't prove that another thing is unfair.

I hope you find my explanation fair!

[Sophia123]

Hi!

I see why E is the correct answer but similarly to the poster above I was a little trapped on answer choice D. I negated the answer to say: "It IS fair for lawmakers to favor interests of people who have the vote over interests of people who do not have the vote" so I thought this might weaken the argument in that the current standard is fair - there is no reason to enact any policy at all because it is fair for the policymakers to favor those who have voting rights over families whose children do not have voting rights.

In trying to determine why this answer is wrong, I came to the conclusion that the above argument attacks one of the premises of the stimulus rather than the conclusion of the stimulus that the policy would allow for fair representation. On the other hand E is better because it directly aims at the conclusion by showing that the stated policy change would not allow for the stated effect in the conclusion.

Let me know if this reasoning makes sense. Thanks in advance for your help!

-Sophia

[Adam Tyson]

I think your final analysis is the best one, Sophia - focus on the conclusion about fair representation, rather than on the proposal to allow the change to voting, and it makes it much easier to see why E is the better answer.

Another reason why D isn't an assumption of the argument is that it's not about giving preference to voters (adults) over non-voters (children), but about paying too little attention to the voters that have children. The problem is failing to favor one group of voters - parents - over another - non-parents - based on who they represent (families vs themselves). It's not the kids who are being neglected, but the families as a whole. Subtle difference, but perhaps helpful in eliminating that answer?

[Shylock237]

Another reason I picked D over E was because I did not identify the correct conclusion. I thought the conclusion was that lawmakers in democracies pay too little attention to the interests of families with underage children. Thus D met the requirement I was looking for. However, looking back at it now, the conclusion is actually the remedy suggestion, making E the more clear answer to my new expectation .

[Robert Carroll]

Shy,

Your analysis looks good to me! With the conclusion identified correctly, you've got the right idea.

Robert Carroll

[lmasta0340]

Hi,

I see why E is the correct answer but I am a little unsure about eliminating A. Is it incorrect because it is referring to the number of voters rather than the number of votes? In other words, would this answer choice be correct if "voters" was replaced with "votes?"

Thank you in advance!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi lmasta0340,

There are a few problems with answer choice (A). The first one you picked up---it talks about voters instead of votes. Secondly though, it makes an opinion statement that is not required by the argument. It says what the legislators SHOULD pay attention to, instead of what the legislators do pay attention to. Our stimulus is all fact based---it's doesn't tell us what should/shouldn't happen, but what does happen. An opinion about what should happen would not impact what does happen.

For example, if a professor says that I should study chapters 25-50, we don't know if I actually do that. You can't deduce what does happen from what should happen.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[Atan_z]

The biggest problem I have with (E) is the word "vote on behalf of", can you vote on behalf of someone who cannot legally vote?