Political Activist: Without term limits, legislative bodies can become

IMO The correct answer is B because if the ideas of the younger politicians were not effective, there would not be a need to give positions to the older ones

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VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

In this assumption question, it is important to understand the parameters of the argument. The activist wants to implement term limits because, without them, older politicians CAN monopolize the seats within a legislative body, and young politicians with fresh ideas are discouraged from trying to join. Note that nowhere in this argument do you know that older politicians ARE currently dominating the legislature, nor do you find evidence that the government is not functioning well or representing its constituents adequately.

For this reason, choice A is incorrect. If you use the Assumption Negation Technique to negate it, you then have:

It IS possible for a policymaker to effectively govern a constituency that is substantially younger.

This is irrelevant to the argument as given: the argument doesn't infer any challenges in effective representation at all, so this negated assumption does not directly challenge the argument.

Choice B is also incorrect. Negated through A.N.T. it reads:

Younger politicians’ ideas are NOT, on average, more effective than older politicians’ ideas.

Again, the argument does not deal with the effectiveness of the politicians' ideas, but rather just expresses regret that new (not necessarily "better") ideas are being left out.

Choice C is correct, and when it is negated you should see why. Negated it reads:

In the absence of term limits, NO elected officials would serve more than two consecutive terms. (note, the logical opposite of "at least some" is "none")

This points out that there is no problem whatsoever - no one is staying more than two consecutive terms, so the proposed term limits would have zero effect! Of course, this is why Assumption Negation is so powerful - it tells you when a premise is necessary by forcing you to consider how the argument would look without that premise. And without any politicians sticking around past two terms, there would be no need to limit them to two.

Choice D is also unnecessary. Negated it reads "There are NOT at least as many highly-qualified young politicians as there are elected officials in their second terms." But note that highly-qualified isn't integral to the argument: you don't know that anyone currently serving is highly-qualified, so why would it matter if the replacements are?

And choice E is also incorrect. Even if it is not in a nation's interests to encourage participation among younger voters, the same problems the activist seeks to solve (losing out on new ideas, etc.) can still apply. The correct answer is C.