Logical Reasoning

PT18 · S2 · Q3 Citizen of Mooresville: Mooresville’s current city council

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Citizen of Mooresville: Mooresville’s current city council is having a ruinous effect on municipal finances.

Statements

- I'm mad at this city council! - I'm gonna campaign against all the incumbents! - I am, however, gonna make an exception for the incumbent in my district. She's cool. I'm still voting for her. - If everyone follows my example, we'll drain the swamp of city council.

Evaluate

Wait sec -- you're saying that everyone should follow your example? campaign against all the incumbents, but vote for the incumbent in your district?

Won't that ... just ... re-elect all the incumbents?

Goal

Since the question stem locks in the idea that everybody only gets to vote in their district, we know that if everyone follows this guy's advice, they're gonna just re-elect all the incumbents.

So the contrapositive of that thought is that .

3.

Assuming that each citizen of Mooresville is allowed to vote only for a city council representative from his or her own neighborhood, for the council’s membership to be changed substantially, it must be true that

  1. Correct

    at least some other voters

    Why this is right

    This is saying "at least some people better not follow this guy's advice". This author said they were still voting for their incumbent in the upcoming election, as an exception to their broad antagonism towards the incumbents. If everyone made that exception, everyone would vote for their incumbent. In order to kick out some incumbents, some people better not make that exception.

    Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    62% picked this

  2. most of the eligible voters

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: voter turnout Too Strong: most Does beating some incumbents at the election require having 51% of people vote? Or could you have only 49% of voters turnout, and still have an election that removes incumbents? Naturally, you can have elections with winners and losers, even if only 25% of voters turnout to vote.

    14% picked this

  3. few of the incumbents on

    Out of Scope: previous elections

    We're not differentiating among the incumbents here. They're all incumbents, whether this is their first term or whether they've been re-elected already. So the author wouldn't care what proportion of these incumbents are first term vs. second-or-more term.

    3% picked this

  4. all of the seats on

    Too Strong: all

    The author doesn't need to assume anything this harsh. If you negate this answer, it's saying "not all the seats are expiring". This means, "at least one seat on the city council isn't actually on the ballot for this upcoming election, so it will be incumbent no matter what". Cool, but that's just one seat. We can still "substantially remake" the city council if 90% of the seats are expiring (i.e. being voted on in this upcoming election).

    10% picked this

  5. none of the challengers in

    Opposite

    This sounds like the opposite of what our author believes and what a transformative election would require. The author hates the incumbents and is campaigning against them, so presumably she thinks some challengers are better able to serve the city. And the question stem is asking what's required for a big change-election to transpire? We certainly wouldn't say, "Well the one thing we really need to beat a bunch of incumbents is for none of our challenger candidates to be better than the incumbents."

    11% picked this

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