Q23 - Whenever she considers voting in

[kimjy89]

I was very confused about this question. I tried to represent the passage in a conditional form and I had:

Kay disagree with each of the other candidates on more than one issue --> It is acceptable for her to vote for a candidate whose opinion differs from hers on at least one issue.

Otherwise --> It is unacceptable for her to vote for that candidate.

I chose C), because I thought the case we are given involving Legrand, Medina and Norton fell under "otherwise" category since the first conditional statement is telling us what Kay should do when there are candidates who disagree with her on at least one issue, but clearly Kay agrees with Medina on all the important issues of which there is only one.

Clearly, i am missing something or I misinterpreted the statements. It would be helpful if you could clear this confusion for me. Thank you.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

It's actually the combination of both principles that allows you to draw answer choice (B) as an inference. We know that according to the otherwise scenario Kay cannot vote for Legrand and Norton. However, according to the first part of the principle it is acceptable to vote for Medina. So answer choice (B) must be the correct answer.

(A) must be false.
(C) could be false.
(D) must be false. It could be an acceptable course of action and there are definitely other unacceptable courses of action.
(E) must be false. Kay cannot vote for Legrand and Medina.

I hope that clears this one up!

[kimjy89]

I don't understand how it is acceptable for Kay to vote for Medina according to the first part of the principle. It says "it is acceptable for me to vote for a candidate whose opinions differ from mine on at least one issue important to me whenever I disagree witht each of the other candidates on even more such issues." But, Kay agrees with Medina on all such important issues so should Medina not fall under the otherwise scenario? Could you explain this question more in detail please?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Yeah, this one is pretty tricky.

The reason why it acceptable for Kay to vote for Medina is that the principle restricts Kay's ability to vote for a candidate whose opinions differ from hers on a least one issue important to her.

The "otherwise" scenario is not actually all other scenarios, but rather the other scenarios that exist when she does NOT disagree with each of the other candidates on even more such issues.

Since the principle does not address candidates who have a differing opinion on an important issue, then voting for Medina would be acceptable. Since the principle doesn't preclude voting for Medina, then it is acceptable to vote for Medina.

Great question! You can use the reasoning process to help work through a ton of principle questions. Does that help clear this up?

[b91302310]

I'm still confused by (B) and (E). Since the principle does not mention how Kay will vote if the candidates share no opinion with her (the principle mentioned applies to only the situation that at least one different opinion), how could we know that it's unacceptable for her to vote for Norton and Legrand ?

Could anyone explain it ?
Thanks.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Good question, but according to the principle it is unacceptable for Kay to vote for Legrand or Norton. To see this we have to keep in mind that if there is an important issue to Kay and she does not share the same opinion on that issue with a candidate then in order to vote for that candidate, she must disagree with each of other candidates on more issues.

There is one important issue in this election and Kay shares her opinion on that issue with Medina, but disagrees on that issue with Legrand and Norton. Since Kay disagrees with Legrand, in order to vote for Legrand, Kay would need to disagree with Medina and Norton on more than one important issue. But there aren't more important issues for Kay to disagree with so Kay cannot possibly vote for Legrand. The same applies to Norton.

Does that answer your question?

[dean.won]

I crossed out B because in the situation outlined i thought it was also unacceptable to not vote for any person (including M)

But i guess my problem is "just because its acceptable to vote for someone, it doesnt make it unacceptable NOT to vote for that same person"

Am I making any sense?

[vince23heat]

First post here. I chose B after POE but hesitated and didn't love the answer because of the "only." Wouldn't slapping a candidate in the face also be an unacceptable course of action for Kay?

[ohthatpatrick]

Ha! Nice angle.

They do seem to be narrowly interpreting the set of all possible actions to be whether or not Kay votes for each of the 3 candidates.

They would probably argue that when the question stem says "In the upcoming mayoral election", the context is to be understood as "as it pertains to voting in the upcoming mayoral election".

Also, they could say that "the principle stated in the passage" didn't mention slapping people in the face, so "ACCORDING to the principle", i.e. "USING the principle", the only grounds for labeling something unacceptable is voting for someone when a different candidate agreed on more key issues.

[JeremyB868]

I'm not following the reasoning in this thread.

As I understand it, the principle can be written as:

Candidate X differs from me on 1+ important issues but other candidates differ on greater # of important issues ----> acceptable to vote for X

and

If preceding sufficient condition fails, I cannot vote for X.

Medina differs from Kay on ZERO important issues; . Therefore we know that it is unacceptable to vote for Legrand and Norton. But we know nothing about whether it is acceptable to vote for Medina.

Am I missing something here?

[EmaD316]

I am a little confused by this question. Let me see if this is where I went wrong:
When the stimulus states that only Medina shares the same opinion as Kay on the issue, do I have to assume that she disagrees with the other two candidates on that issue? Thus, there are only two options: agreeing or disagreeing.

[JinZ551]

My concern is, by saying "Only M shares her opinion on that issue", does it necessarily mean M AGREEs with K?
For example, the only issue important to K is whether the gov should raise income tax, K oppose raising income tax. M is the only candidate who share her opinion on the issue of whether to raise income tax. But we don’t know whether K support or oppose raising income tax, correct?

And though L and M does not share their opinion on this issue, we cannot say firmly whether they support or oppose raising income tax, thus we don’t know whether K disagree with L or M?

This is the reason why I picked C. Because I thought there is no way for us to know whether K disagree on MORE important issues with any of the three than the other two. Thus the situation falls in the second half of the principle.