There is growing demand in the state for “initiative and referendum,”

Question

There is growing demand in the state for “initiative and referendum,” a procedure that  allows voters to propose and pass laws, as well as to repeal them .

(A) allows voters to propose and pass laws, as well as to repeal them
(B) allows voters to propose, pass, and to repeal laws
(C) allows voters to propose, to pass, and repeal laws
(D) will allow the voter to propose, pass, as well as to repeal laws
(E) will allow laws to be proposed, passed, as well as repealed by voters

VeritasPrepBrian · Accepted Answer

I'd add here that "as well as" is not a synonym for "and." That's why (A) works - the "and" construction completes with "the procedure allows voters to propose and pass laws" and then "as well as" is used to tack on a new thought to the end of the sentence.

(E) Is trying to use "as well as" in direct place of "and" and that's not a proper usage of that phrase. "As well as" sets apart an item as different from / unequal to the others (like "the Golden State Warriors have built their team around great shooters in Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, as well as players like Draymond Green who create unique mismatches" - here Steph and Klay are the shooters, and the bit about Draymond is an attached separate and related but unequal thought)

The GMAT error you see a lot is using "as well as" to complete a list of three items (as in (E) here) and because "as well as" doesn't ascribe equality to the term it applies to it can't be used in that fashion to complete a list. So that's another actionable error in both (D) and (E).

abhinavthapa57 · Answer

Is the option E incorrect because of the use of possessive form of the verbs?

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi Abhinav, logically speaking,  propose and pass  the laws is one  unit  (since one would logically propose a law and then pass it) while  repealing  is another unit.

Hence, the correct grouping is:

i) to propose and pass laws
ii) to repeal them

Even if you thought A and E  didn't  have any meaning difference, E is in  passive  voice. Everything else remaining the same, one should prefer  active  voice over passive voice.

p.s. Our book    EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana    discusses  Active and Passive voice , its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

eswarchethu135 · Answer

There is growing demand in the state for “initiative and referendum,” a procedure that  allows voters to propose and pass laws, as well as to repeal them .

Only choice without any parallelism error.  CORRECT 
 
either "to propose, to pass and to repeal laws" is the correct usage or "to propose, pass and repeal" is the correct usage. So this choice is also  ELIMINATED .
 
to propose, to pass and to repeal....is the correct parallel structure.  ELIMINATED 
 
demand is growing for the procedure. Demand for a procedure will grow if there is some applicability of the procedure already. It is not possible that based on the futuristic outcome of the procedure now the demand is growing. So options which use "will" can comfortably be  ELIMINATED 
 
same error as in option D. So  ELIMINATED

OPTION:  A

susmitha2110 · Answer

Isn't them in option A ambiguous?

Though logically "them" refers to laws.

Posted from my mobile device

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

Yeah, good question. I'm a pretty huge advocate for "don't use pronoun ambiguity as a primary decision point unless it's obviously ambiguous." The mere presence of multiple plural nouns doesn't make "them" ambiguous, so if you're on a mission to find pronoun ambiguity you'll over diagnose it quite a bit.

Here note that there are really two plural nouns: voters and laws. But look at the verb that acts on "them" - it's "repeal" and the subject of that is already set for that as "voters." So if "them" were to refer to "voters" it would be "voters can repeal voters" which 1) is weird and 2) because it's an action upon oneself the pronoun really should be "themselves."

The big headline for me - pronoun ambiguity shouldn't ever be your initial decision point. I have that on a list with redundancy as a handful of decision points that aren't as cut-and-dry as, say, illogical verb tenses or improper singular/plural agreement, so you shouldn't prioritize pronoun ambiguity or redundancy because you'll just see them in lots of places where they're not a problem. We talk about that in this video on the Veritas Prep YouTube Channel if you're interested:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P8SQQ0gA8Y  The aim there is that your greatest asset on Sentence Correction is that you get to prioritize the order in which you make decisions, and some decisions are a whole lot clearer than others.

Jezza · Answer

This question is clear and simple:

When you try to make a list of 3 items, you can NEVER do "A, B, as well as C", this is never ever allowed in GMAT. You have to do "A, B, and C"

In addition, you either do "to do A, to do B, and to do C", or "to do A, do B, and do C". The second and third items must be in the same structure.

Engineer1 · Answer

In addition to above - E has passive voice over which active voice (in option A) is desirable

There is growing demand in the state for “initiative and referendum,”

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

There is growing demand in the state for “initiative and referendum,”

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