December 2005 LSAT Section 4 Question 22

If there is an election, you can either vote or not. If you vote, you have the satisfaction of knowing you influenced...

Martint on September 15, 2016

I don't understand.

It seemed to me that the pattern of reasoning was different in all five answer choices. None of them seemed to follow the same pattern as the argument. Can someone walk me through this?

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Mehran on September 16, 2016

@Martint let's break down the stimulus first.

"If there is an election, you can either vote or not."

E ==> V or not V

"If you vote, you have the satisfaction of knowing you influenced the results of the election;"

V ==> SKIR

"if you do not vote, you have no right to complain about the results."

not V ==> not RCR

"So, following an election, either you will have the satisfaction of knowing you influenced its results or you will have no right to complain."

E ==> SKIR or not RCR

This is a valid transitive argument as follows:

E ==> V ==> SKIR
E ==> not V ==> not RCR

Now let's take a look at (D):

"If you use a computer, its messages are either easily readable or not."

CM ==> ER or not ER

"If the messages are easily readable, they are merely password protected."

ER ==> PP

"If they are not easily readable, they are electronically encrypted."

not ER ==> EE

"So any message on the computer you use is either password protected or electronically encrypted."

CM ==> PP or EE

Notice this is the exact same reasoning structure as the stimulus:

CM ==> ER ==> PP
CM ==> not ER ==> EE

So (D) would be the correct answer.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.