#25 - The law of the city of Weston regarding contributions

[Robert Carroll]

BLG and LSAT,

As Steve pointed out, this is "the" law of contributions to mayoral campaigns. Satisfying this requirement means satisfying all the relevant laws (since this is the only relevant law). Thus, this does create a biconditional.

Robert Carroll

[ataraxia10]

I see how C complies with the law given in the premise. Is A wrong because a nonresident of Weston might have contributed in excess of $100 to Brimley's campaign but Brimley might not have accepted this contribution? Or is there any other reason why A might be wrong?

[James Finch]

Hi Ataraxia,

In order to answer this question correctly, we need to quickly understand two things in the stimulus: first, that this is the entirety of Weston's campaign laws (so no other laws are in effect), and that the law divides nonresidents into two categories: nonresidents who have never resided in Weston (never residents) and nonresidents who formerly resided in Weston (former residents). The law only imposes a regulation on the never residents, not the former residents.

(A) doesn't work because current nonresidents who were formerly residents of Weston might have contributed to Brimley's campaign, and they didn't need to register their donations to the city council, because they are former residents, regardless of the size of the donation.

Hope this clears things up!

[ataraxia10]

Hi James

I suppose the premise says that Brimley's contributors were all residents/former residents. But I am still confused as to why C stands out among other options, simply because I feel like all the options are confusing and A seems to be the best choice. This is my thought process:

Excess of $100 by nonresidents who are not former residents ---> must be registered with the city council.

Contrapositive: must be registered --->Contribution less than or equal to $100 by nonresidents

If this is the case, we only know one sufficient condition that necessitates registration with the city council, and doesn't that leaves other possibilities that may require registration with the city council? Since the premise states that Brimley's campaign complied to this law based on the information that he only accepted contributions from residents and nonresidents, and there are no options dictating what the laws are for resident/former resident contributions, wouldn't A be the best possible MBT response? I feel like the contrapositive I showed is expressed in A.

[Brook Miscoski]

ataraxia10,

The problem with your contrapositive is that you left out "who are not former residents..."

In other words, the rule only applied to nonresidents who didn't previously live in Weston, and then it only applied if they didn't register. Since we don't have to worry about registration (no contributions requiring registration were accepted), your contrapositive should have looked like:

-must be registered each contribution less than or equal to $100 by any person who never resided in Weston.

Thus, any number of nonresidents could have donated in excess of $100 without registering and without violating the rule, as long as they previously had resided in Weston. That makes (A) wrong.

Since the rule only requires people who never lived in Weston to register, once the stimulus tells us that the campaign only accepted contributions from people who have lived in Weston, we know that none of the contributors are required to register--answer choice (C).

[sparrrkk_]

Hi,

I initially rejected C as the answer because I was thinking there could be other laws in place where residents and former residents of Weston need to register with the city council.
However, it seems like the wording of "THE law of the city" suggests that this is the only law?
Would my initial reasoning work if it said "A law of the city" instead?

A is wrong because it doesn't consider nonresidents who are former residents of Weston? Assuming that this is the only law regarding mayoral campaigns, a nonresident who is a former resident of Weston could contribute in excess of $100 without violating the law.

Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

Good on all counts, sparrrkk_! It is because this is THE law, and we have it in its entirety, rather than just a portion of the law. If they made the change you suggested, your reasoning would be spot on. And you are right about answer A, because former residents can contribute as much as they want without registering. Good work!

[cgs174]

I'm still confused as to why C is a better choice than E.

In my reasoning I identified that this was the only law in play regarding registering contributions. I also identified that there were three conditions in this argument which must be met in order to necessitate registration. It must be 1) more than 100$ and 2) made by a non-resident 3) who has never lived in Weston

If the conclusion (Brimley's campaign complied with the law because they only took contributions from those whose contributions didn't need to be registered ) is true, then Brimley did not receive any contributions which needed to be registered. Answer C matches this prephrase almost perfectly and is virtually repeating the stimulus. However, I didn't feel like that was sufficient to affirm that Brimley was compliant with the law . What is Brimley's campaign was non-compliant with the law, not because they failed to register contributions, but because they registered contributions that shouldn't have been. Answer choice E) seems to encompass C), while resolving this concern.

Perhaps my failure was approaching the stimulus as a different type of question that it is. Do you think if this were a strengthen, justify the conclusion, or assumption question, that E) might be a better answer.

Thank you!!!

[Robert Carroll]

cgs174,

This is a Must Be True question. You were saying you didn't see how the answer choice proved the conclusion. That's not at all what we are supposed to do for a Must Be True question. We should be drawing an inference from the stimulus. We already know that Brimley complied with the law - the stimulus says so. We're not trying to prove that. We're trying to infer something that has to be true, if that is true.

There is no indication in the stimulus that registering contributions beyond what's required would be a violation of any kind. Answer choice (E) is new information and thus wrong.

Must Be True and Strengthen (or Justify, or Assumption) are extremely different question types. For a Must Be True, we must add nothing to the stimulus and merely draw an inference. For Strengthen (and Justify, and Assumption), we have to add something to the stimulus to make the argument better. But while the question types may be so different as to make hypothetical comparisons difficult, answer choice (E) simply does not matter for the argument anyway, so wouldn't have been correct for any question type. That Brimley did not register contributions when not required to is irrelevant.

Robert Carroll