LSAT 117 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

LR Question 23 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Political scientist: One of the most interesting dilemmas …

QUESTION TYPE: Complete the Argument

ANALYSIS: The stimulus presents a dilemma:

1. Don’t completely restrict people’s freedom to spend money.
2. Don’t allow wealthy candidates to dominate campaigns through massive spending.
3. Don’t solve the problem by paying for everyone’s expensive campaigns.

We need an answer that balances all three concerns.

The most natural compromise is to allow candidates to spend money, but place a cap on how much they can spend.

This preserves some freedom while preventing huge spending disparities and avoiding government subsidization.

___________

1. This makes everything worse! The stimulus is concerned about equal opportunity to be heard, so how would it be good to restrict candidacy to wealthy people?
2. CORRECT. An upper spending limit still lets people spend money, prevents candidates from vastly outspending rivals, and avoids government funding of expensive campaigns. It addresses all of the concerns.
3. This is telling us to give every candidate a little % of their total spend. It’s not necessarily against the stimulus since it just says to not subsidize expensive campaigns. But paying for the same percentage of every campaign leaves candidates just as unequal as before. Wealthy candidates would still be able to vastly outspend their rivals, so all voices would still not have an equal chance to be heard.
4. This goes too far. The stimulus says people should generally be free to spend their money as they choose. Completely prohibiting wealthy people from spending their own money violates that principle.
5. This creates a race: if one candidate spends $10 million, everyone else may spend $10 million. That does nothing to prevent excessively expensive campaigns and may still allow huge spending advantages. It also doesn’t ensure equal voices are heard.