LSAT 135 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q5

LR Question 5 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Lahar: We must now settle on a procedure for deciding …

QUESTION TYPE: Method of Reasoning

CONCLUSION: The club should use majority vote to decide meeting agendas.

REASONING: The constitution only allows 3 options. Unanimous consent is unlikely to work, and using a committee has caused problems in the past.

ANALYSIS: This is a clean argument.

Lahar starts with 3 possible options:

1. Unanimous consent
2. Majority vote
3. Committee

Then two of those options are eliminated:

• Unanimous consent probably won’t happen
• Committees have a bad track record because they lead to factionalism and backroom deals

At that point, only one option is left: majority vote. So he concludes that they should use majority vote.

Notice that Lahar doesn’t spend any time arguing that majority vote is especially good. The recommendation comes almost entirely from eliminating the alternatives.

___________

1. The constitution actually permits all 3 procedures. Lahar rejects 2 of them for practical reasons, not because they’re unconstitutional.
2. The argument is only about meeting agendas. It never says majority vote should be used for every club decision.
3. No constitutional change is proposed. Lahar simply chooses one of the procedures the constitution already allows.
4. CORRECT. Lahar rules out 2 of the 3 available procedures, leaving majority vote as the only remaining choice.
5. Lahar never responds to other people or their arguments. The argument criticizes the alternatives themselves, not the people who support them.