PT129.S2.Q25

PrepTest 129 - Section 2 - Question 25

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The law of the city of Weston regarding contributions to mayoral campaigns is as follows: all contributions to these campaigns in excess of $100 made by nonresidents of Weston who are not former residents of Weston must be registered with the city council. █████████ ███████ ████████ ███████ ████████ ████ ████ ███ █████ ██ ████████ █████████████ ████ ████ █████████ ███ ██████ █████████ ██ ███████

The Setup

Weston has a law about which campaign contributions must be registered with the city council. The law applies to a specific category:

Required to register: contributions over $100 from nonresidents of Weston who are not former residents.

Brimley's campaign accepted contributions only from residents and former residents. Since none of those contributions fall into the registration category, the campaign complied with the law.

A Rare Biconditional

This question turns on a move that's rare on the LSAT. Normally, when a stimulus says "all X must Y," that's a one-way conditional: if X, then Y. It doesn't tell us anything about non-X. By default, you should read this law that way: contributions in the described category must be registered, with the door left open for other contributions to also need registration for reasons the stimulus doesn't mention.

But the stimulus says the law of Weston regarding contributions to mayoral campaigns is as follows. Not "a" law. Not "one" law. The law. That signals we're being told the entire rule on the subject, not just one provision among others. If contributions outside the described category also needed to be registered, we'd expect to be told. So we can read the law as covering both directions: contributions need to be registered if and only if they're over $100 and come from nonresidents who aren't former residents.

This two-way reading (also known as a biconditional) is unusual on the LSAT. The default is to treat "all X must Y" as one-way, and that default is right in almost every case. Here, the "the law... is as follows" framing is what allows us to treat the rule as a biconditional. If the stimulus had said something like "one law of Weston requires...," we wouldn't do that.

Under the biconditional reading, contributions from residents and former residents never need to be registered. Since Brimley's contributions came only from those two groups, we can prove that no contributions to Brimley's campaign needed to be registered.

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25.

If all the statements above ███ █████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ██████████ ████ ██ █████

a

No nonresident of ██████ ███████████ ██ ██████ ██ ████ ██ █████████ █████████

Could be false. Brimley accepted contributions from former residents, and former residents are technically nonresidents. They don't currently live in Weston, even if they used to. So a former resident might have contributed more than $100, which would make (A) false.

16%
b

Some contributions to █████████ ████████ ██ ██████ ██ ████ ████ ██████████ ████ ███ ████ ████████

Could be false. The stimulus doesn't tell us whether any of Brimley's contributions exceeded $100. Even if some did, they came from residents or former residents and didn't fall into the registration category. So it's possible that nobody registered a contribution to Brimley's campaign..

6%
c

No contributions to █████████ ████████ ██████ ██ ██ ██████████ ████ ███ ████ ████████

Must be true. The law specifies one category of contribution that requires registration: contributions over $100 from nonresidents who aren't former residents. And because the stimulus tells us this is the law on registration, anything outside that category doesn't need to be registered.

Brimley's contributions came only from residents and former residents. None of those contributions fall into the registration category, so none needed to be registered.

63%
d

All contributions to █████████ ████████ ████ ████ ██████████ ████ ███ ████ ███████ ████ ██ ██████ ██ █████

Could be false. Although no contributions to Brimley's campaign needed to be registered, it's possible that some contributors who donated $100 or less still chose to register voluntarily.

6%
e

Brimley's campaign did ███ ████████ ███ █████████████ ████ ███ ████ ████████

Could be false. Although none of Brimley's contributions needed to be registered, the stimulus doesn't say none were. The campaign might have voluntarily registered some contributions, even though doing so wasn't required.

9%

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