The political scientist argues that decreasing voter turnout is entirely explained by people losing faith in the government’s ability to solve problems. This is because people losing faith in government’s ability to change public opinion is an example of something that causes people to lose enthusiasm for voting.

This argument is flawed because it treats a sufficient condition as if it were a necessary condition. In other words, the argument assumes that because a loss of faith in government’s ability to solve problems is sufficient to cause people to lose interest in voting, that it must be what’s causing voter turnout to decrease in this case. However, there could be other conditions that are also sufficient to decrease voter turnout. So we cannot be sure that decreasing voter turnout must be due to the belief that the government can't solve the most important problems.