Sharon: The high number of citizens not registered to vote has persisted despite many attempts to make registering easier. Surveys show that most of these citizens believe that their votes would not make a difference. Until that belief is changed, simplifying the registration process will not increase the percentage of citizens registering to vote.
Speaker 1 Summary
Francis concludes that more people would register and vote if local election boards made the registration process easier. This is because failure to properly register prevents a large portion of the voting-age citizens from voting.
Speaker 2 Summary
Sharon concludes that until people start to think their votes make a difference, simplifying the registration process would not lead to more people registering and voting. This is because the portion of citizens who don’t register has been high even after prior attempts to simplify the registration process, and because surveys show most citizens think their votes won’t make a difference.
Objective
We’re looking for a point of disagreement. The speakers disagree about whether making the registration process easier will lead to more people registering and voting.
A
whether changing the voter registration process would be cumbersome
Neither expresses an opinion about this. Francis speaks about a cumbersome registration process, but doesn’t say anything about whether changing the process will be cumbersome.
B
why so many citizens do not register to vote
This is a point of disagreement, although not framed in the way we might have predicted. Francis thinks so many people aren’t voting because of a difficult registration process. Sharon thinks the real problem is a belief that one’s vote doesn’t make a difference.
C
what percentage of those registered to vote actually vote
Sharon doesn’t express an opinion about what proportion of people aren’t registered to vote.
D
whether local election boards have simplified the registration process
Francis doesn’t express any opinion about this. She thinks more people would register to vote if the process were easier, but that doesn’t indicate any belief about whether some simplification has already occurred.
E
why the public lacks confidence in the effects of voting
Neither express an opinion about this. Although Sharon mentions that people don’t think their votes make a difference, she doesn’t describe why people think this way.
Summarize Argument
The author concludes that if human souls are immortal, then the bad will be punished. This is based on the fact that the existence of “moral order,” which is a state in which bad is always punished, depends on human soulds being immortal.
Identify and Describe Flaw
The author confuses sufficient and necessary conditions. The premise establishes that human souls being immortal is necessary in order for “moral order” (bad always punished) to exist. But this doesn’t imply that if human souls are immortal, that this would be sufficient for “moral order” to exist.
A
From the assertion that something is necessary to a moral order, the argument concludes that that thing is sufficient for an element of the moral order to be realized.
The premise establishes that human souls’ immortality is necessary for moral order. But the author mistakenly thinks this is sufficient for an element of that mordal order to be true (the element of the bad always being punished).
B
The argument takes mere beliefs to be established facts.
The author does not assume or conclude that anything is an established fact. Although he describes what some cultures believe about moral order in the second sentence, he doesn’t suggest that these beliefs are true.
C
From the claim that the immortality of human souls implies that there is a moral order in the universe, the argument concludes that there being a moral order in the universe implies that human souls are immortal.
The author does not rely on a claim that immortality implies the existence of a moral order. Rather, the premise asserts that immortality is necessary for a moral order. Also, the conclusion does not assert that a moral order implies immortality.
D
The argument treats two fundamentally different conceptions of a moral order as essentially the same.
Although the author describes two conceptions of a moral order in the second sentence, the author does not treat these as the same. These play no role in supporting the conclusion. The conclusion is based on the first sentence, which describes what is necessary for a moral order.
E
The argument’s conclusion is presupposed in the definition it gives of a moral order.
The author does not use circular reasoning. The conclusion asserts that immortality is sufficient for an aspect of moral order. This idea is not assumed in the premise, which asserts instead that immortality is necessary for moral order.