Logical reasoning PrepTest 129 · Section 2 · Question 25

Incorrect. Don't forget that a former resident is a nonresident! Some of those former resident donors might have made a donation larger than $100, so this answer doesn't have to be true.

Incorrect. It's possible that some of these residents or former residents ponied up more than $100 and Brimley registered them despite not needing to—maybe he's running on campaign finance reform and wants to set a good example!

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Must Be True

Stimulus Summary:
Donation over $100 AND Nonresident AND not Former residents → Donation registered with city council
Brimley: Accepted only donations from residents and former residents
Therefore: Brimley followed this law

Answer Anticipation:
It's easy to forget this is a Must Be True question since it's so clearly an argument, but we can't forget the type of question we're in! Since this is a Must Be True question with a conditional and a specific case, we should see if we can apply the conditional to reach an inference (though the argument already essentially did that).

Here, the conditional rule lays out who has to have their donation registered—anyone donating over a certain amount who doesn't and hasn't lived in Weston. That doesn't apply to any of Brimley's donors, all of whom live or lived in Weston at some point.

At first, it doesn't appear as if the rule applies here—the donors don't satisfy the sufficient condition of the rule, and thus it shouldn't apply, right? However, the stimulus notes that Brimley complied with this law, and it's noted that this is "[t]he law" of the city of Weston, not "a law," and since the article "the" makes this law singular, there can be no other law out there governing donor disclosures. In other words, if this law doesn't require disclosure, then disclosure isn't required. In essence, you could treat the rule as a biconditional.

With that noted, the inference to be drawn here is that Brimley's campaign didn't need to register any donation with the city council.

Answer Explanation:
Since they were all made by residents and former residents, no donation to Brimley's campaign falls under the donor disclosure law, so none of the donations needed to be disclosed. This answer is supported.

Key Takeaway:
We're going to write an anti-takeaway here: Don't get too hung up on the distinction between "the law" and "a law"—it's only happened once on the test, and it's very unlikely it'll happen again. Sometimes, for these questions, it's important to know that you should let the lesson learned go instead of focusing on committing it to memory—you don't want to have too many rules in your head on test day!

Incorrect. Brimley may have decided to register all $100+ campaign contributions with the city council despite not needing to, while skipping those under $100.

Incorrect. Brimley very well may have decided to register the donations with the city council despite not needing to since they all fell outside the disclosure law—again, he may be trying to set a good example!