vox--2020-01-23--Why everyone loves Lizzo — well, almost everyone

In February 2019 , the folks over at The Cut made a prediction : “ It ’ s just a matter of time till everybody loves Lizzo.
” They were right .
A few months later , in May , Lizzo ’ s 2017 single “ Truth Hurts ” made its debut on the Billboard charts , and continues to find popularity more than two years after its release .
Soon , Lizzo had gone from an artist with indie buzz to a household name , a highlight of the MTV Video Music Awards , and a Billboard Hot 100 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tours .
At the end of 2019 , she collected more 2020 Grammy nominations than anyone else — eight , including nods in each of the four major categories .
Lizzo had become more than an acclaimed musician by the time she received those Grammy nods : She was an icon .
Beloved for her emphatic positivity , Lizzo cultivated a brand on her bold sense of humor and tireless self-love .
She was a heavyset black woman , and she had no shame in saying so — or in flaunting her pride @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” coupled with Lizzo ’ s dynamic performances , propelled her to star status ; she received waves of praise for embracing her sexuality in showing off her black , female , plus-size body .
Plus , she was a ridiculously talented flutist , of all things — a flutist in pop music !
Your fave could never .
But she seemed to attract just as many critics as she did fans of her unabashedly proud and at-times brash social media presence — especially on Instagram and Twitter , where she ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of body positivity and clapping back at anyone who dares to pick a fight .
Self-described health-conscious figures made fatphobic comments and voiced “ concerns ” over her weight , while other detractors complained that Lizzo was overly hostile toward critics .
Some people accused her of peddling a white-consumer-friendly version of blackness , or even misrepresenting her genre at the expense of other black artists vying for awards recognition .
In a sense , all big successes end up polarizing audiences : “ It ain ’ t my fault that I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Lizzo herself puts it in her hit song “ Juice.
” The criticisms she ’ s faced since she rose to fame have taken on racial , social , and even economic dimensions .
And she has not ignored or kept silent in response to any of them .
While Lizzo broke out as an aspirational , self-loving queen of the charts , she ’ s certainly not infallible .
The truth is that Lizzo is a powerful role model whose power isn ’ t always well-received .
More than anyone , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she can be polarizing .
But in keeping with her public persona , it hardly seems like the callouts will keep her down .
Lizzo became one of 2019 ’ s most explosive , and inspiring , stars The 31-year-old Lizzo , whose real name is Melissa Jefferson , has been recording and releasing music for more than five years .
But 2019 saw her go from a darling of the indie music scene — which is primarily composed of white artists and listeners , as Lizzo herself has noted — to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fan base .
In January 2019 , she released “ Juice , ” a single championed for its message of self-love and quirky , Jheri curl-laden music video .
It became her first song to break through to the mainstream , landing on the Billboard Hot R & B Songs chart .
The momentum of “ Juice ” carried through to April , when Lizzo dropped her major-label debut album , Cuz I Love You .
Both commercial and critical success followed .
Then came the meme-ification of “ Truth Hurts , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reemerged last spring , both on TikTok and in a key scene during the Netflix movie Someone Great .
Thanks to its hooky opening refrain , “ I just took a DNA test / Turns out , I ’ m 100 percent that bitch , ” the track became a cultural phenomenon — a rallying cry for the sort of catchy self-appreciation that other song-memes like “ Hot Girl Summer ” continued to popularize throughout the year .
Audiences loved the emphatic pride of Lizzo ’ s lyrics , especially coupled with her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and self-described “ fat bitch , ” as she said to singer Sam Smith in an April 2019 V Magazine interview .
In an age when Western beauty standards continue to privilege the thin and pale , Lizzo was immediately lauded as a beacon of body positivity .
It ’ s a role she wore proudly after what she described as years of judgmental , negative self-talk .
She ’ s been open about the work she ’ s put into finding peace with herself , from regular therapy sessions to putting self-care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I felt this [ frustration ] with how I was being perceived all through high school , and for much of my life , ” Lizzo told Smith in April .
“ Until I was like , fuck it .
I just need to be undeniable .
It ’ s not about me being big .
It ’ s about me being me .
Y ’ all are going to get this bad bitch .
You are going to get these bops and get this show .
And you are going to get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s “ bad bitch ” energy — or , rather , her commitment to authenticity — is made plain by her social media presence .
On Instagram , she posts clips of her dazzling live performances amid professional photo shoots and sexy selfies .
Her fans gush over all of her social media content , but especially the pieces that reflect her love for herself : one photo set of beautiful , tastefully censored nudes garnered more than 1.1 million likes on Instagram ; a tweet where she kisses her own mirrored @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lines have popped up everywhere , from more than 500 shirts and stickers on Redbubble to baby onesies to inspirational Instagram captions .
The Kidz Bop crew reworked “ Truth Hurts ” for its family-friendly hits collection .
( “ I ’ m 100 % that kid , ” the preteens sing . )
Lizzo has even been a go-to artist for the campaign playlists of notable ( and mostly white ) Democrats like Hillary Clinton , Pete Buttigieg , and Kirsten Gillibrand .
Her commitment to self-love hasn ’ t come without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that some of the body-positive labels assigned to her have made her feel as though her body is being politicized more than celebrated .
She explained her take this month , as part of Rolling Stone ’ s cover story that also featured lavish photos of her reveling in her full-bodied glory .
“ I ’ m so much more than that .
Because I actually present that , I have a whole career , ” she said of the body positive label .
“ It ’ s not a trend.
” But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ played well with an adoring public , taken by Lizzo ’ s honesty .
She loved herself and her body , even before anyone saw her as the face of a movement .
Her music communicates that best : “ ’ Cause I ’ m my own soulmate / I know how to love me / I know that I ’ m always gon na hold me down , ” she sings in “ Soulmate , ” a track on Cuz I Love You .
Those lyrics are , in essence , Lizzo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anyone else .
Critics have gotten under Lizzo ’ s skin before , but she hasn ’ t always taken the high road Lizzo ’ s particular brand of positivity hasn ’ t sat well with everyone .
For as much as some people have embraced her unabashed self-pride , others have dismissed it as egotistical , even defensive .
When Lizzo released Cuz I Love You , it was met with near-universal praise .
But the notably stodgy music publication Pitchfork rated the album a 6.5 out of 10 , noting its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” In response , Lizzo tweeted in all-caps that “ PEOPLE WHO ‘ REVIEW ’ ALBUMS AND DON ’ T MAKE MUSIC THEMSELVES SHOULD BE UNEMPLOYED.
” Lizzo ’ s fans took her side , galvanized by their beloved ’ s apparent outrage .
And the moment more broadly stirred up debate over what qualifies a critic to review an artist ’ s work .
Lizzo ’ s attack on critics prompted such defenses as “ Shut the f*ck up about music criticism ” and “ learn to take criticism a little better.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s fans could be weaponized against her critics , a power dynamic that left the critics on the losing side of the brouhaha .
“ The swollen significance of artist narrative and stan culture suggests that the only way a culture journalist can avoid obsolescence , ” wrote Kieran Devlin in i-D following the incident , “ or Lizzo ’ s recommendation of unemployment , is through buying into the shrieking love-in , to effectively participate as a stan , an obliging cog in the PR machine.
” Lizzo later tried to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ IS AN INVITATION TO ALL MUSIC JOURNALISTS TO KICK IT IN THE STUDIO WITH ME FOR MY NEXT ALBUM !
I ’ d like to understand your world as much as you can understand mine.
” But by then , there was recognized tension between the artist and those who dared to cross her .
“ Look , I ’ m new , ” she recently told Rolling Stone .
“ You put two plates of food in front of people , [ and ] one is some fried chicken .
If you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And the other is , like , fried ostrich pussy .
You not gon na want to fuck with that.
” Lizzo has also taken heat for her outfit choices , which are often revealing .
In December , she made headlines by wearing a dress that prominently displayed her thong while sitting courtside at an NBA game .
( At one point , she even twerked on camera . )
The look made waves for its salaciousness at a “ family-friendly event , ” as some outraged observers framed it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that those same observers probably would not have reacted the same way had the same outfit been worn by been a white , thin celebrity .
“ Lizzo , who has now crossed into mainstream hyper-visibility , has to deal with the hypercritical gaze that both her fatness and black female identity draw onto her image , ” the Daily Beast said in a piece on how the thong incident spoke volumes on how blackness is perceived in media .
Lizzo ’ s size became a topic of debate again in late December @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that celebrating Lizzo ’ s weight was a damaging part of the body positivity movement .
Michaels ’ s comments were met with backlash , but they are proof that fatphobia around Lizzo ’ s image persists .
Lizzo ’ s blackness , however , has also been called into question in a controversial manner .
Azealia Banks , herself an incendiary rapper , called out Lizzo for being a “ millennial mammy.
” “ She looks like she is making a fool of her black self for a white American public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Instagram comment , in reference to Lizzo ’ s penchant for tight outfits and her heavily white fan base .
Banks is not the most reputable of critics .
But she is not alone among people of color who have scrutinized how Lizzo ’ s image resonates with white audiences .
Lizzo is unquestionably popular within the white mainstream ; as BuzzFeed ’ s Tomi Obaro has noted , “ Lizzo fans have become synonymous with a certain kind of white person who likes to post selfies with her lyrics as captions and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Instagram posts with ‘ Yassssss ’ and ‘ WERK ’ and ‘ KWEEN ’ — signs of a certain waning black credibility.
” This issue came up again in November , when Lizzo won the Soul Train Award for Album of the Year .
The artist won the title over a contemporary , Ari Lennox , who is well-known in the soul genre .
Lennox called her loss a “ snub ” in a series of emotional tweets , prompting fans to call out Lizzo as an unworthy winner .
Lizzo ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as “ black ” as Lennox ’ s , the argument went .
Lizzo “ makes pop music for white girls who have live laugh love tattooed on them , ” read one popular defense of Lennox , speaking to the mainstream pop audience ’ s embrace of her image and work .
After all , when your song makes it onto a Kidz Bop album , it ’ s hard to argue that it hasn ’ t penetrated white culture .
( “ Yeah , there ’ s hella white people at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rolling Stone .
“ What am I gon na do , turn them away ?
My music is for everybody.
” ) Perhaps it ’ s not surprising , then , that Lizzo ’ s popularity with a diverse audience has been accompanied by a debate over whether she panders to the white listeners who accepted her when she primarily played for indie crowds .
But other people of color have taken pains to break up that argument .
“ Lizzo is here now , unapologetically fat , unapologetically black , and unapologetically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , summing up the more popular read : Lizzo is an icon of positivity , her sartorial choices or the thoughts of voting bodies be damned .
Will the Grammys make or break Lizzo ?
At this point , does it matter ?
The awards voting body that has taken the most notice of Lizzo in the past year is the Recording Academy , which has handed her eight nominations for the 2020 Grammys .
Yet Lizzo kicked off the year by announcing she would be taking a break from Twitter , her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cited “ too many trolls ” as the reason for her departure ; “ I ’ ll be back when I feel like it , ” she said .
Since then , she has remained off the platform , with tweets to her account signed by her management and strictly focused on promoting her performances and tour dates .
It ’ s a surprising turn of events for someone with 1.5 million followers who ’ s posted more than 20,000 tweets — a power user by any measure .
Yet Lizzo does remain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to show off her body , make jokes , and talk about her happiness to the delight of her 7.5 million followers .
An Instagram post from January 16 nails the Lizzo motto , even amid her Twitter blackout , the fatphobia she is forced to endure , and her occasionally caustic online persona : “ I love you .
You are beautiful .
You can do anything .
”

In February 2019, the folks over at The Cut made a prediction: “It’s just a matter of time till everybody loves Lizzo.”
They were right. A few months later, in May, Lizzo’s 2017 single “Truth Hurts” made its debut on the Billboard charts, and continues to find popularity more than two years after its release. Soon, Lizzo had gone from an artist with indie buzz to a household name, a highlight of the MTV Video Music Awards, and a Billboard Hot 100 record-breaker, headlining two sold-out, nationwide tours. At the end of 2019, she collected more 2020 Grammy nominations than anyone else — eight, including nods in each of the four major categories.
Lizzo had become more than an acclaimed musician by the time she received those Grammy nods: She was an icon. Beloved for her emphatic positivity, Lizzo cultivated a brand on her bold sense of humor and tireless self-love. She was a heavyset black woman, and she had no shame in saying so — or in flaunting her pride in herself.
“Truth Hurts,” coupled with Lizzo’s dynamic performances, propelled her to star status; she received waves of praise for embracing her sexuality in showing off her black, female, plus-size body. Plus, she was a ridiculously talented flutist, of all things — a flutist in pop music! Your fave could never.
But she seemed to attract just as many critics as she did fans of her unabashedly proud and at-times brash social media presence — especially on Instagram and Twitter, where she’s known for posting risqué selfies in support of body positivity and clapping back at anyone who dares to pick a fight. Self-described health-conscious figures made fatphobic comments and voiced “concerns” over her weight, while other detractors complained that Lizzo was overly hostile toward critics. Some people accused her of peddling a white-consumer-friendly version of blackness, or even misrepresenting her genre at the expense of other black artists vying for awards recognition.
In a sense, all big successes end up polarizing audiences: “It ain’t my fault that I’m out here making news,” as Lizzo herself puts it in her hit song “Juice.” The criticisms she’s faced since she rose to fame have taken on racial, social, and even economic dimensions. And she has not ignored or kept silent in response to any of them. While Lizzo broke out as an aspirational, self-loving queen of the charts, she’s certainly not infallible. The truth is that Lizzo is a powerful role model whose power isn’t always well-received.
More than anyone, it seems Lizzo is well aware that she can be polarizing. But in keeping with her public persona, it hardly seems like the callouts will keep her down.
Lizzo became one of 2019’s most explosive, and inspiring, stars
The 31-year-old Lizzo, whose real name is Melissa Jefferson, has been recording and releasing music for more than five years. But 2019 saw her go from a darling of the indie music scene — which is primarily composed of white artists and listeners, as Lizzo herself has noted — to a mainstream success beloved by a more diverse fan base.
In January 2019, she released “Juice,” a single championed for its message of self-love and quirky, Jheri curl-laden music video. It became her first song to break through to the mainstream, landing on the Billboard Hot R&B Songs chart. The momentum of “Juice” carried through to April, when Lizzo dropped her major-label debut album, Cuz I Love You. Both commercial and critical success followed.
Then came the meme-ification of “Truth Hurts,” a song originally released in 2017 that reemerged last spring, both on TikTok and in a key scene during the Netflix movie Someone Great. Thanks to its hooky opening refrain, “I just took a DNA test / Turns out, I’m 100 percent that bitch,” the track became a cultural phenomenon — a rallying cry for the sort of catchy self-appreciation that other song-memes like “Hot Girl Summer” continued to popularize throughout the year.
Audiences loved the emphatic pride of Lizzo’s lyrics, especially coupled with her image. Lizzo is a black woman and self-described “fat bitch,” as she said to singer Sam Smith in an April 2019 V Magazine interview. In an age when Western beauty standards continue to privilege the thin and pale, Lizzo was immediately lauded as a beacon of body positivity. It’s a role she wore proudly after what she described as years of judgmental, negative self-talk. She’s been open about the work she’s put into finding peace with herself, from regular therapy sessions to putting self-care above tour dates as needed.
“I felt this [frustration] with how I was being perceived all through high school, and for much of my life,” Lizzo told Smith in April. “Until I was like, fuck it. I just need to be undeniable. It’s not about me being big. It’s about me being me. Y’all are going to get this bad bitch. You are going to get these bops and get this show. And you are going to get your life by receiving it.”
Lizzo’s “bad bitch” energy — or, rather, her commitment to authenticity — is made plain by her social media presence. On Instagram, she posts clips of her dazzling live performances amid professional photo shoots and sexy selfies. Her fans gush over all of her social media content, but especially the pieces that reflect her love for herself: one photo set of beautiful, tastefully censored nudes garnered more than 1.1 million likes on Instagram; a tweet where she kisses her own mirrored image has 40,000 likes.
Her catchiest lines have popped up everywhere, from more than 500 shirts and stickers on Redbubble to baby onesies to inspirational Instagram captions. The Kidz Bop crew reworked “Truth Hurts” for its family-friendly hits collection. (“I’m 100% that kid,” the preteens sing.) Lizzo has even been a go-to artist for the campaign playlists of notable (and mostly white) Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
What I really mean when I say I love myself pic.twitter.com/Pfv1g50Ff9 — Feelin Good As Hell (@lizzo) August 22, 2019
Her commitment to self-love hasn’t come without challenges, however. Lizzo has said that some of the body-positive labels assigned to her have made her feel as though her body is being politicized more than celebrated.
She explained her take this month, as part of Rolling Stone’s cover story that also featured lavish photos of her reveling in her full-bodied glory.
“I’m so much more than that. Because I actually present that, I have a whole career,” she said of the body positive label. “It’s not a trend.”
Every Lizzo cover is iconic but this? This is ART.
It's doesn't always have to be about her body (she's so much more than that), but seeing a magazine celebrate the body of a fat black woman the way it DESERVES to be is world-shifting.
All hail @lizzo for @RollingStone pic.twitter.com/1hM4O2nKZh — Megan (@bodyposipanda_) January 23, 2020
But this sentiment, too, has typically played well with an adoring public, taken by Lizzo’s honesty. She loved herself and her body, even before anyone saw her as the face of a movement. Her music communicates that best: “’Cause I’m my own soulmate / I know how to love me / I know that I’m always gonna hold me down,” she sings in “Soulmate,” a track on Cuz I Love You. Those lyrics are, in essence, Lizzo’s MO: love thyself before anyone else.
Critics have gotten under Lizzo’s skin before, but she hasn’t always taken the high road
Lizzo’s particular brand of positivity hasn’t sat well with everyone. For as much as some people have embraced her unabashed self-pride, others have dismissed it as egotistical, even defensive.
When Lizzo released Cuz I Love You, it was met with near-universal praise. But the notably stodgy music publication Pitchfork rated the album a 6.5 out of 10, noting its “overwrought production ... and ham-handed rapping.” In response, Lizzo tweeted in all-caps that “PEOPLE WHO ‘REVIEW’ ALBUMS AND DON’T MAKE MUSIC THEMSELVES SHOULD BE UNEMPLOYED.”
Lizzo’s fans took her side, galvanized by their beloved’s apparent outrage. And the moment more broadly stirred up debate over what qualifies a critic to review an artist’s work. Lizzo’s attack on critics prompted such defenses as “Shut the f*ck up about music criticism” and “learn to take criticism a little better.” Twitter became a battleground where Lizzo’s fans could be weaponized against her critics, a power dynamic that left the critics on the losing side of the brouhaha.
“The swollen significance of artist narrative and stan culture suggests that the only way a culture journalist can avoid obsolescence,” wrote Kieran Devlin in i-D following the incident, “or Lizzo’s recommendation of unemployment, is through buying into the shrieking love-in, to effectively participate as a stan, an obliging cog in the PR machine.”
Lizzo later tried to make amends by tweeting, “THIS IS AN INVITATION TO ALL MUSIC JOURNALISTS TO KICK IT IN THE STUDIO WITH ME FOR MY NEXT ALBUM! I’d like to understand your world as much as you can understand mine.” But by then, there was recognized tension between the artist and those who dared to cross her.
“Look, I’m new,” she recently told Rolling Stone. “You put two plates of food in front of people, [and] one is some fried chicken. If you like fried chicken that’s great. And the other is, like, fried ostrich pussy. You not gonna want to fuck with that.”
Lizzo has also taken heat for her outfit choices, which are often revealing. In December, she made headlines by wearing a dress that prominently displayed her thong while sitting courtside at an NBA game. (At one point, she even twerked on camera.) The look made waves for its salaciousness at a “family-friendly event,” as some outraged observers framed it. At the same time, defenders argued that those same observers probably would not have reacted the same way had the same outfit been worn by been a white, thin celebrity.
“Lizzo, who has now crossed into mainstream hyper-visibility, has to deal with the hypercritical gaze that both her fatness and black female identity draw onto her image,” the Daily Beast said in a piece on how the thong incident spoke volumes on how blackness is perceived in media. Lizzo’s size became a topic of debate again in late December, when the fitness celebrity Jillian Michaels said that celebrating Lizzo’s weight was a damaging part of the body positivity movement. Michaels’s comments were met with backlash, but they are proof that fatphobia around Lizzo’s image persists.
Lizzo’s blackness, however, has also been called into question in a controversial manner. Azealia Banks, herself an incendiary rapper, called out Lizzo for being a “millennial mammy.” “She looks like she is making a fool of her black self for a white American public,” Banks wrote in a September Instagram comment, in reference to Lizzo’s penchant for tight outfits and her heavily white fan base.
Banks is not the most reputable of critics. But she is not alone among people of color who have scrutinized how Lizzo’s image resonates with white audiences. Lizzo is unquestionably popular within the white mainstream; as BuzzFeed’s Tomi Obaro has noted, “Lizzo fans have become synonymous with a certain kind of white person who likes to post selfies with her lyrics as captions and who comment on all of Lizzo’s Instagram posts with ‘Yassssss’ and ‘WERK’ and ‘KWEEN’ — signs of a certain waning black credibility.”
This issue came up again in November, when Lizzo won the Soul Train Award for Album of the Year. The artist won the title over a contemporary, Ari Lennox, who is well-known in the soul genre. Lennox called her loss a “snub” in a series of emotional tweets, prompting fans to call out Lizzo as an unworthy winner. Lizzo’s music was neither as soulful nor as “black” as Lennox’s, the argument went.
Lizzo “makes pop music for white girls who have live laugh love tattooed on them,” read one popular defense of Lennox, speaking to the mainstream pop audience’s embrace of her image and work. After all, when your song makes it onto a Kidz Bop album, it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t penetrated white culture. (“Yeah, there’s hella white people at my shows,” Lizzo acknowledged to Rolling Stone. “What am I gonna do, turn them away? My music is for everybody.”) Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that Lizzo’s popularity with a diverse audience has been accompanied by a debate over whether she panders to the white listeners who accepted her when she primarily played for indie crowds.
But other people of color have taken pains to break up that argument. “Lizzo is here now, unapologetically fat, unapologetically black, and unapologetically thriving,” Obaro wrote for BuzzFeed, summing up the more popular read: Lizzo is an icon of positivity, her sartorial choices or the thoughts of voting bodies be damned.
Will the Grammys make or break Lizzo? At this point, does it matter?
The awards voting body that has taken the most notice of Lizzo in the past year is the Recording Academy, which has handed her eight nominations for the 2020 Grammys. Yet Lizzo kicked off the year by announcing she would be taking a break from Twitter, her most active social media platform. She cited “too many trolls” as the reason for her departure; “I’ll be back when I feel like it,” she said.
Since then, she has remained off the platform, with tweets to her account signed by her management and strictly focused on promoting her performances and tour dates. It’s a surprising turn of events for someone with 1.5 million followers who’s posted more than 20,000 tweets — a power user by any measure. Yet Lizzo does remain active on Instagram, where she continues to show off her body, make jokes, and talk about her happiness to the delight of her 7.5 million followers.
An Instagram post from January 16 nails the Lizzo motto, even amid her Twitter blackout, the fatphobia she is forced to endure, and her occasionally caustic online persona: “I love you. You are beautiful. You can do anything.”


vox--2020-01-23--The evidence on travel bans for diseases like coronavirus is clear: They don’t work

Travel restrictions to control the spread of disease have been tried since 1377 , when the Mediterranean city of Dubrovnik — formerly known as Ragusa and now part of Croatia — imposed a 40-day isolation period on ships suspected of carrying the Black Death that were entering the city .
Since then , nearly every new pandemic threat has come with efforts to seal up borders .
During the 2003 SARS outbreak , affected cities around the world — from Toronto to Beijing — experimented with isolating cases , shutting down travel , and screening people at airports and train @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ebola epidemic was met with calls by US politicians , including then-Gov .
Chris Christie ( R-NJ ) and Donald Trump , to impose a travel ban on West Africa .
Now , China is experimenting with its own drastic quarantine measures , as a rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak moves through the country .
On January 23 , authorities imposed travel restrictions on three cities — Wuhan , Huanggang , and Ezhou — effectively shutting down the movement of some 20 million people .
That ’ s more than the number of people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which is why global health researchers called the quarantine unprecedented .
“ I am not aware of attempts to quarantine on this scale , ” Tom Inglesby , director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health , told Vox .
It would be one thing if there was strong evidence that travel bans work .
But the trouble is , they don ’ t appear to be helpful .
At best , travel restrictions , and even airport screenings , delay the spread of disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of people who eventually get sick .
Instead , they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease .
They are also expensive , resource-intensive , and potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved .
“ [ China ’ s quarantine ] could inadvertently make people have less confidence in the government response , ” Inglesby added .
“ It could increase fear about the outbreak in the public .
If this outbreak were happening in the US , I would advise strongly against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A look at the research helps explain why .
1 ) Travel bans in the 1980s for HIV/AIDS didn ’ t stop the spread of the disease After HIV/AIDS was discovered in 1984 , governments around the world imposed entry , stay and residence restrictions on people with the disease .
As one 2008 study notes : “ Sixty-six of the 186 countries in the world for which data are available currently have some form of restriction in place.
” In the US , the ban — instituted by President Ronald Reagan in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came into office .
HIV/AIDS managed to spread anyway , reaching pandemic proportions by the 1990s .
This 1989 review of HIV/AIDS travel restrictions found they were “ ineffective , impractical , costly , harmful , and may be discriminatory.
” Prevention of HIV worked better than travel restriction , the authors concluded .
“ The rapidity and extent of HIV spread in any country is primarily determined not by HIV-infected travelers but by the risk-producing activities of its citizens , regardless of whether HIV is introduced by foreign travelers or returning nationals.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ not prevent a deadly and prolonged flu season Temporary flight bans and decreases in air travel following 9/11 provided a natural experiment in the impact of travel on seasonal influenza .
Researchers found the reduced movement of people didn ’ t stop the spread of the flu ; it delayed it by a couple of weeks and led to a prolonged flu season .
The researchers didn ’ t test whether this delay reduced flu cases or saved lives .
But a look at the CDC data shows that flu deaths actually spiked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from about 3,900 the year before to more than 13,000 post-9/11 .
This isn ’ t to say that 9/11 had anything to do with the increase in flu deaths , but rather that travel bans didn ’ t seem to prevent them .
One 2006 study modeled various approaches for stopping the spread of H5N1 avian flu .
It found that restricting travel wasn ’ t effective : “ Our simulations demonstrate that , in a highly mobile population , restricting travel after an outbreak is detected is likely to delay slightly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impacting the eventual number ill. ” It ’ s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country , the authors of the paper wrote .
People will inevitably move — even indirectly from the countries that are quarantined .
After the arrival of H1N1 swine flu in 2009 , some countries imposed travel restrictions on flights going to and coming from Mexico , resulting in a 40 percent decrease in overall travel volume .
A study looking at this event found it “ only led to an average delay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other countries ( i.e .
the first imported case ) of less than three days.
” Again , reduced travel delayed ( by three days ! )
but didn ’ t stop disease spread .
The authors wrote , “ No containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.
” As the US government expands its effort to screen people at airports for the new coronavirus , it ’ s worth looking at what happened in Canada during the SARS outbreak of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries most affected : the virus caused hundreds of cases , 44 deaths , and wreaked havoc on Ontario ’ s airports , health care system , and the economy .
A major effort to stop the spread of the disease involved screening millions of people at airports , through the use of thermal scanners and sending passengers who may have symptoms to nurses or quarantine officers for an assessment .
According to a Canadian government report on the effort , some 25,000 residents in the greater Toronto area were quarantined and millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effort was a waste of money and human resources ; it didn ’ t pick up a single case of the disease .
From the analysis : So not only does the evidence suggest that quarantines and travel restrictions don ’ t work , it doesn ’ t account for the devastating economic impact and potential harm to the outbreak response that such restrictions can bring about .
In the case of China , there ’ s also the question of whether these measures are too little , too late .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in distant regions of the country , and there are increasing numbers of exported cases internationally , ” said Isaac Bogoch , a global health and infectious diseases researcher at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute .
So are there alternatives ?
Instead of using airport screening and entertaining plans to seal borders , the governments of the world should focus their attention and resources on educating travelers about this new disease , and on helping China respond to the outbreak .
We know this for sure : The longer this virus spreads , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the greater chance it has of spreading throughout Asia and the world .

Editor’s note, April 22, 2021: This article, published in January 2020, does not reflect the emerging science around travel restrictions to prevent the spread of epidemics. For more on coronavirus travel restrictions, see our latest coverage.
On Sunday evening, the US government followed a slew of other countries and began enforcing a new coronavirus travel ban: Foreigners who visited China in the past two weeks are temporarily barred from entering the country, while US citizens who have been to China’s Hubei province — where the outbreak originated — will have to be quarantined for 14 days.
Russia, Australia, Japan, and Italy have announced similar restrictions.
These types of travel restrictions to control the spread of disease have been tried since 1377, when the Mediterranean city of Dubrovnik — formerly known as Ragusa and now part of Croatia — imposed a 40-day isolation period on ships suspected of carrying the black plague that were entering the city.
Since then, nearly every new pandemic threat has come with efforts to seal up borders. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, affected cities around the world from Toronto to Beijing experimented with shutting down travel and screening people at borders for the disease. The 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic was met with calls by US politicians, including then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Donald Trump, to close off travel with West Africa.
With more than 17,000 cases of the new virus in China, travel restrictions are surfacing once again. “We are preparing as if this is the next pandemic,” Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on Monday. “Strong measures now may blunt the impact of this virus on the US.”
But it would be one thing if there were strong evidence that travel bans work to stop the spread of the disease. Instead, “Travel restrictions can cause more harm than good by hindering info-sharing, medical supply chains and harming economies,” said the World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“These types of measures have been shown to be ineffective at halting the spread of the viruses,” said Adam Kamradt-Scott, a professor in global health at the University of Sydney who studies global health security.
At best, travel restrictions, and even airport screenings, delay pathogens from moving — but they don’t impact the number of people who eventually get sick. Rather, they make it harder for international aid and experts to reach communities affected by disease. They are also expensive, resource-intensive, and potentially harmful to the economies of cities and countries involved. A look at the research helps explain why.
1) Travel bans in the 1980s for HIV/AIDS didn’t stop the spread
After HIV/AIDS was discovered in 1984, governments around the world imposed entry, stay, and residence restrictions on people with the disease. As one 2008 study notes: “Sixty-six of the 186 countries in the world for which data are available currently have some form of restriction in place.” In the US, the ban — instituted by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 — was only lifted when Obama came into office.
HIV/AIDS managed to spread anyway, reaching pandemic proportions by the 1990s. This 1989 review of HIV/AIDS travel restrictions found they were “ineffective, impractical, costly, harmful, and may be discriminatory.” Prevention of HIV worked better than travel restriction, the authors concluded. “The rapidity and extent of HIV spread in any country is primarily determined not by HIV-infected travelers but by the risk-producing activities of its citizens, regardless of whether HIV is introduced by foreign travelers or returning nationals.”
2) Flight bans post-9/11 did not prevent a deadly and prolonged flu season
Temporary flight bans and decreases in air travel following 9/11 provided a natural experiment in the impact of travel on seasonal influenza. Researchers found the reduced movement of people didn’t stop the spread of the flu; it delayed it by a couple of weeks and led to a prolonged flu season.
The researchers didn’t test whether this delay reduced flu cases or saved lives. But a look at the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that flu deaths actually spiked during the 2001-2002 flu season, rising from about 3,900 the year before to more than 13,000 post-9/11. This isn’t to say that 9/11 had anything to do with the increase in flu deaths, but rather that travel bans didn’t seem to prevent them.
3) Travel restrictions didn’t cut bird flu infections
One 2006 study modeled various approaches for stopping the spread of H5N1 avian flu. It found that restricting travel wasn’t effective: “Our simulations demonstrate that, in a highly mobile population, restricting travel after an outbreak is detected is likely to delay slightly the time course of the outbreak without impacting the eventual number ill.”
It’s expensive and nearly impossible to seal off the borders of a country, the authors of the paper wrote. People will inevitably move — even indirectly from the countries that are quarantined.
Kamradt-Scott shared a revealing example: During the height of the SARS outbreak in 2003, he had a colleague who wanted to return to the UK from Toronto, one of the cities most affected by the virus. So she caught a domestic flight from Toronto to Vancouver, then boarded a flight to London. “When she arrived at Heathrow [airport] and authorities asked her, ‘Have you been to Toronto,’ she said no and walked right through.”
4) Swine flu travel restrictions achieved “no containment”
After the arrival of H1N1 swine flu in 2009, some countries imposed travel restrictions on flights going to and coming from Mexico, resulting in a 40 percent decrease in overall travel volume. A study looking at this event found it “only led to an average delay in the arrival of the infection in other countries (i.e. the first imported case) of less than three days.”
Again, reduced travel delayed (by three days!) but didn’t stop the disease spread. The authors wrote, “No containment was achieved by such restrictions and the virus was able to reach pandemic proportions in a short time.”
5) Airport screening after SARS didn’t catch a single case
As the US government expands its effort to screen people at airports for the new coronavirus, it’s worth looking at what happened in Canada during the SARS outbreak of 2003. Canada was one of the countries most affected: The virus caused hundreds of cases and 44 deaths, and wreaked havoc on the nation’s airports, health care system, and economy. A major effort to stop the spread of the disease involved screening millions of people at airports, through the use of thermal scanners and sending passengers who might have symptoms to nurses or quarantine officers for an assessment.
According to a Canadian government report on the effort, some 25,000 residents in the greater Toronto area were quarantined and millions more were screened at airports. The effort was a waste of money and human resources; it didn’t pick up a single case of the disease. From the analysis:
Roughly 9,100 passengers were referred for further assessment by screening nurses or quarantine officers. None had SARS. The pilot thermal scanner project screened about 2.4 million passengers. Only 832 required further assessment, and again none were found to have SARS. In other countries, the yields for airport screening measures were similarly low.
Travel restrictions are political theater
So not only does the evidence suggest that travel restrictions don’t work, it doesn’t account for the devastating economic impact and potential harm to the outbreak response that such restrictions can bring about.
In the case of China, which currently has some 50 million citizens under quarantine, there’s also the question of whether these measures are too little, too late. “We are already hearing reports of the coronavirus in distant regions of the country, and there are increasing numbers of exported cases internationally,” Isaac Bogoch, a global health and infectious disease researcher at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, told Vox.
Are there alternatives? Instead of using airport screening and entertaining plans to seal borders, the governments of the world should focus their attention and resources on educating travelers about this new disease, and on helping China respond to the outbreak. We know this for sure: The longer this virus spreads there, the more people get the disease, and the greater chance it has of spreading throughout Asia and the world.


vox--2020-01-23--The two-party system is killing our democracy

There is nothing inevitable about our dysfunctional government .
There is no good reason why our national political institutions should descend into zero-sum hyper-partisan trench warfare , or why we should experience yet another year of existential political dread , fearing that if our side loses the 2020 election , America will be irrevocably broken .
The reason we are in this mess is because we now have , for the first time , a genuine two-party system .
We ’ ve had two major parties for a long time , but for many decades Republicans and Democrats weren ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the GOP ; some conservatives called themselves Democrats .
The two parties contained enough multitudes that American politics functioned sort of like a multiparty democracy in practice .
That ’ s all changed .
We are now in an era in which we have two truly distinct national parties , organized around two competing visions of national identity .
It works against , not with , our political institutions .
It ’ s a disaster and it ’ s driving us all crazy .
The way out is to replace our current two-party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ true diversity of Americans — a multiparty system that ’ s more fluid and responsive to Americans ’ political preferences and that dissolves our binary partisanship .
To get there , we need to change the way we elect our representatives .
Instead of holding elections in congressional districts where the single candidate who gets the most votes wins , we need to move toward a proportional representation system , currently used in many advanced democracies .
In such a system , if a party gets 40 percent of the vote in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state ’ s congressional delegation will represent that party — straightforward and intuitive .
Our two-party system is largely a product of our antiquated voting process .
We have plurality voting in the US — that is , the winner is whoever gets the most votes in the field even if they don ’ t nab a majority of the votes .
For example , if candidate A gets 49 percent of the vote , candidate B gets 48 percent , and fringe candidates combine for the remaining 3 percent , candidate A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 51 percent voted against them .
But nothing in the Constitution requires this system .
Congress could pass a bill tomorrow changing how we vote .
Change won ’ t happen overnight .
And yes , change of any kind at all seems unlikely .
But big democracy reforms have happened throughout American history .
Women ’ s suffrage , the direct election of senators , the Voting Rights Act – all these were at some point improbable notions .
They happened when citizen dissatisfaction rose to unsustainable levels and crystallized into demand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a new age of dissatisfaction .
More and more Americans are afraid for our political future .
Our democracy is flashing warning signs ; all-or-nothing hyper-partisanship is destroying the overarching norms of democratic stability , mutual toleration , and forbearance .
This is exactly how democracies die .
In a democracy , we need to be able to agree to disagree , and agree on a fair process to resolve what we disagree about .
Self-governance depends on electoral losers accepting their losses , and on electoral winners giving the losers the freedom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fair chance to compete in the next election .
Hyper-partisanship threatens all this by raising electoral stakes to impossible heights , and making the other party seem so extreme and dangerous that the thought of them winning is simply unacceptable .
Once the parties polarize in a two-party system , the danger is that polarization becomes a self-reinforcing dynamic — a doom loop .
The more the two parties take strongly opposing positions , the more different they appear .
And the more different they appear , the more the other party comes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the other .
Understandably , many on the left believe the problem is simply the Republican Party , and if only Democrats could win decisive majorities , American democracy would work better .
After all , Republicans have pushed a much more aggressive version of “ constitutional hardball ” — they ’ ve pursued partisan gerrymandering more enthusiastically , they ’ ve actively impeded the ability of Democratic constituencies to vote , and they broke precedent by not giving a sitting president the opportunity to get even a hearing on his Supreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ balanced strength of the two parties nationally , and the ways in which the Senate and the Electoral College are biased toward the rural party ( generally Republicans ) , Democrats are not likely to win decisive majorities any time soon .
Even if you believe Republicans are the problem , the two-party system ensures that Republicans can keep doing what they are doing simply by virtue of being the only viable alternative for voters who can ’ t see themselves as Democrats .
Moreover , the idea that if only one party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself a perpetuation of the doom loop .
And yet , it ’ s a natural and sensible reaction to current politics , if you think that we ’ re stuck with our two-party system .
The way out of the crisis is to break the zero-sum doom loop of hyper-partisanship .
That means having more than two parties , ideally between four and six — enough to represent the ideological diversity of the country , and offer enough space for different coalitions and alignments , but not so much fragmentation to render @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with too many choices .
To allow for more parties , we ’ d have to change the way we vote .
Right now , we elect our congressional representatives in single-winner , plurality elections — that is , we hold 435 separate elections for the House , each decided by a plurality .
So a party that gets 48 percent of the vote gets in a district wins everything , while a party that gets 46 percent of the vote gets nothing , since there can only be one winner .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ directs almost all political ambition into one of the two leading parties .
Instead of the current system , I propose that we elect representatives in multi-winner , proportional elections , in which multiple members of Congress represent an electoral district , and parties ’ share of seats more closely reflects their share of votes .
Multiple parties can thrive because they don ’ t need to win a plurality in order to get representation .
Many versions of proportional representation ( PR ) exist in the world ( including ones that generate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s version of hyper-PR , which has 17 parties with representation in the 120-seat Knesset — and even more competing in elections ) .
The version of proportional representation I favor is a version that Ireland has used for almost a century , which combines multi-member districts with something called ranked-choice voting ( RCV ) .
With ranked-choice voting , voters indicate their preferences by ranking their candidates on the ballot .
If your top choice is the lowest vote-getter when the votes are first counted , that candidate gets crossed off — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counted .
In the single-winner version , candidates then get eliminated from last place up , until one candidate emerges with a majority .
In a multiple-winner system , say five , the process ends when five candidates remain ( after all vote transfers are completed ) .
We should also use ranked-choice voting for Senate elections — though because states have only two senators , typically elected at different times , Senate elections would still have to be single-winner , ranked-choice voting .
For president , I ’ d replace the Electoral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Here ’ s how it might play out : We might see at least two parties running candidates on the left , one represented perhaps by Sen. Bernie Sanders , and another represented by former Vice President Joe Biden , and at least two parties running candidates on the right , one represented by President Donald Trump , another represented by former Ohio governor John Kasich ( or another more centrist Republican ) .
We might see more candidates , too .
With ranked-choice voting , candidates would reach out to each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coalitions in exchange for second-choice preferences .
Changing the way we vote to allow for more parties might seem radical , but it really shouldn ’ t .
First , it ’ s the hyper-partisan two-party system of the last decade that marks the true deviation from our history .
America has had something more like a multiparty democracy within its two-party system for most of the country ’ s history .
Conservative Oklahoma Democrats and liberal Illinois Democrats were once in Congress alongside liberal Vermont Republicans and conservative South Carolina Republicans .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ different kinds of coalitions .
Second , proportional , multiparty democracy is the norm among advanced democracies , and has been for over a century .
Yes , it ’ s true that under such systems , parties sometimes struggle to build governing coalitions .
But that ’ s politics .
Compromise and coalition-building are always hard .
But because multiparty systems require both to form a government , parties eventually figure it out .
Proportional multiparty democracy would likely increase voter turnout .
US voter turnout has long been at the bottom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to improve participation .
But perhaps our low participation shouldn ’ t be that surprising .
Our two-party single-winner elections generate lots of lopsided districts where residents ’ votes are irrelevant .
When your vote is irrelevant , why bother ?
Under proportional representation , by contrast , all votes matter equally .
If the party you support gets 30 percent of the vote in your state , it doesn ’ t mean you get to send zero representatives — it means 30 percent of your state ’ s congressional delegation will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Because all votes matter , parties and candidates have more incentive to mobilize more voters .
Third , multiparty democracy shouldn ’ t seem radical because it embodies the same values — fluid compromise and flexible coalition building — that the Framers , particularly James Madison , saw as essential to self-governance .
The Framers despised political parties , but what they really feared was a binary two-party system .
They feared that if just one party became the majority , it would use its power to abuse the remaining minority party , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ destabilizing .
They were spot-on .
Reform is hard , but not impossible Maybe you ’ re thinking : Okay , that all makes sense .
But c ’ mon : We can barely pass a budget on time .
How are we going to upend our entire voting system ?
We ’ re not — at least not immediately .
The electoral reforms I propose would be a major change .
And it would take a broad social movement and lots of public pressure to help bring about change .
But the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first .
Change is already taking root at the state and local levels .
Maine adopted ranked-choice voting in 2018 .
New York City adopted ranked-choice voting in 2019 , joining several other major cities , and Massachusetts may adopt it in 2020 .
Democracy reform in the US has almost always been a state-led process .
And there are plenty of state-level opportunities .
Moreover , the history of American democracy is also a history of reform .
We ’ ve repeatedly changed our voting rules , making our democracy more inclusive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections of senators , and single-member districts were all affirmative reforms that changed American democracy .
In the first two decades of the 20th century , most Western European democracies adopted proportional representation .
Though each country had its own distinct path , in each country a majority of democratically elected representatives moved to a different voting system because they thought it would be an improvement over the status quo .
In the 1990s , New Zealand ditched first-past-the-post elections and adopted a version of proportional representation , responding to massive public discontent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always unlikely .
But moments do arise when the case for reform becomes so clear , and the demand so high , that it becomes only a matter of time before the right spark catches and reform seems inevitable .
Perhaps our current discontent is combustible enough for that coming spark .
Dissatisfaction with and distrust in our current political system is at its highest levels in the history of modern polling , and probably comparable to levels in the lead-up to the Progressive Era .
The raw material for a major democracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still inchoate .
That means it will depend on what we all do to help it grow and develop .
The first step is understanding just how dangerous the status quo would be , if left to continue its democracy-destroying doom loop .
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at the think tank New America , co-host of the Politics in Question podcast , and author of the new book , Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop : The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America .

There is nothing inevitable about our dysfunctional government.
There is no good reason why our national political institutions should descend into zero-sum hyper-partisan trench warfare, or why we should experience yet another year of existential political dread, fearing that if our side loses the 2020 election, America will be irrevocably broken.
The reason we are in this mess is because we now have, for the first time, a genuine two-party system. We’ve had two major parties for a long time, but for many decades Republicans and Democrats weren’t cleanly split. Some liberals inhabited the GOP; some conservatives called themselves Democrats. The two parties contained enough multitudes that American politics functioned sort of like a multiparty democracy in practice.
That’s all changed. We are now in an era in which we have two truly distinct national parties, organized around two competing visions of national identity. It works against, not with, our political institutions. It’s a disaster and it’s driving us all crazy.
The way out is to replace our current two-party system with a system that represents the true diversity of Americans — a multiparty system that’s more fluid and responsive to Americans’ political preferences and that dissolves our binary partisanship.
To get there, we need to change the way we elect our representatives. Instead of holding elections in congressional districts where the single candidate who gets the most votes wins, we need to move toward a proportional representation system, currently used in many advanced democracies. In such a system, if a party gets 40 percent of the vote in a state, then 40 percent of that state’s congressional delegation will represent that party — straightforward and intuitive.
Our two-party system is largely a product of our antiquated voting process. We have plurality voting in the US — that is, the winner is whoever gets the most votes in the field even if they don’t nab a majority of the votes. For example, if candidate A gets 49 percent of the vote, candidate B gets 48 percent, and fringe candidates combine for the remaining 3 percent, candidate A is the sole winner — even though 51 percent voted against them.
But nothing in the Constitution requires this system. Congress could pass a bill tomorrow changing how we vote.
Change won’t happen overnight. And yes, change of any kind at all seems unlikely. But big democracy reforms have happened throughout American history. Women’s suffrage, the direct election of senators, the Voting Rights Act – all these were at some point improbable notions. They happened when citizen dissatisfaction rose to unsustainable levels and crystallized into demand for specific reforms.
We are in a new age of dissatisfaction. More and more Americans are afraid for our political future. Our democracy is flashing warning signs; all-or-nothing hyper-partisanship is destroying the overarching norms of democratic stability, mutual toleration, and forbearance. This is exactly how democracies die.
Our two-party doom loop, explained
In a democracy, we need to be able to agree to disagree, and agree on a fair process to resolve what we disagree about. Self-governance depends on electoral losers accepting their losses, and on electoral winners giving the losers the freedom to dissent and criticize, and a fair chance to compete in the next election.
Hyper-partisanship threatens all this by raising electoral stakes to impossible heights, and making the other party seem so extreme and dangerous that the thought of them winning is simply unacceptable.
Once the parties polarize in a two-party system, the danger is that polarization becomes a self-reinforcing dynamic — a doom loop. The more the two parties take strongly opposing positions, the more different they appear. And the more different they appear, the more the other party comes to feel like a genuine existential threat to the other.
Understandably, many on the left believe the problem is simply the Republican Party, and if only Democrats could win decisive majorities, American democracy would work better. After all, Republicans have pushed a much more aggressive version of “constitutional hardball” — they’ve pursued partisan gerrymandering more enthusiastically, they’ve actively impeded the ability of Democratic constituencies to vote, and they broke precedent by not giving a sitting president the opportunity to get even a hearing on his Supreme Court nominee.
But given the evenly balanced strength of the two parties nationally, and the ways in which the Senate and the Electoral College are biased toward the rural party (generally Republicans), Democrats are not likely to win decisive majorities any time soon. Even if you believe Republicans are the problem, the two-party system ensures that Republicans can keep doing what they are doing simply by virtue of being the only viable alternative for voters who can’t see themselves as Democrats.
Moreover, the idea that if only one party could gain the permanent upper hand is itself a perpetuation of the doom loop. And yet, it’s a natural and sensible reaction to current politics, if you think that we’re stuck with our two-party system.
Why multiparty democracy?
The way out of the crisis is to break the zero-sum doom loop of hyper-partisanship. That means having more than two parties, ideally between four and six — enough to represent the ideological diversity of the country, and offer enough space for different coalitions and alignments, but not so much fragmentation to render coalition formation overly difficult and overwhelm voters with too many choices.
To allow for more parties, we’d have to change the way we vote. Right now, we elect our congressional representatives in single-winner, plurality elections — that is, we hold 435 separate elections for the House, each decided by a plurality. So a party that gets 48 percent of the vote gets in a district wins everything, while a party that gets 46 percent of the vote gets nothing, since there can only be one winner. This system renders third parties as spoilers and directs almost all political ambition into one of the two leading parties.
Instead of the current system, I propose that we elect representatives in multi-winner, proportional elections, in which multiple members of Congress represent an electoral district, and parties’ share of seats more closely reflects their share of votes. Multiple parties can thrive because they don’t need to win a plurality in order to get representation.
Many versions of proportional representation (PR) exist in the world (including ones that generate too many parties, like Israel’s version of hyper-PR, which has 17 parties with representation in the 120-seat Knesset — and even more competing in elections). The version of proportional representation I favor is a version that Ireland has used for almost a century, which combines multi-member districts with something called ranked-choice voting (RCV).
With ranked-choice voting, voters indicate their preferences by ranking their candidates on the ballot. If your top choice is the lowest vote-getter when the votes are first counted, that candidate gets crossed off — but your number two choice then gets counted. In the single-winner version, candidates then get eliminated from last place up, until one candidate emerges with a majority. In a multiple-winner system, say five, the process ends when five candidates remain (after all vote transfers are completed).
We should also use ranked-choice voting for Senate elections — though because states have only two senators, typically elected at different times, Senate elections would still have to be single-winner, ranked-choice voting.
For president, I’d replace the Electoral College with a national ranked-choice voting election. Here’s how it might play out: We might see at least two parties running candidates on the left, one represented perhaps by Sen. Bernie Sanders, and another represented by former Vice President Joe Biden, and at least two parties running candidates on the right, one represented by President Donald Trump, another represented by former Ohio governor John Kasich (or another more centrist Republican). We might see more candidates, too. With ranked-choice voting, candidates would reach out to each others’ supporters, promising broad governing coalitions in exchange for second-choice preferences.
Changing the way we vote to allow for more parties might seem radical, but it really shouldn’t.
First, it’s the hyper-partisan two-party system of the last decade that marks the true deviation from our history. America has had something more like a multiparty democracy within its two-party system for most of the country’s history. Conservative Oklahoma Democrats and liberal Illinois Democrats were once in Congress alongside liberal Vermont Republicans and conservative South Carolina Republicans. Depending on the issue, they formed different kinds of coalitions.
Second, proportional, multiparty democracy is the norm among advanced democracies, and has been for over a century. Yes, it’s true that under such systems, parties sometimes struggle to build governing coalitions. But that’s politics. Compromise and coalition-building are always hard. But because multiparty systems require both to form a government, parties eventually figure it out.
Proportional multiparty democracy would likely increase voter turnout. US voter turnout has long been at the bottom of OECD countries, despite countless efforts to improve participation. But perhaps our low participation shouldn’t be that surprising. Our two-party single-winner elections generate lots of lopsided districts where residents’ votes are irrelevant. When your vote is irrelevant, why bother?
Under proportional representation, by contrast, all votes matter equally. If the party you support gets 30 percent of the vote in your state, it doesn’t mean you get to send zero representatives — it means 30 percent of your state’s congressional delegation will be composed of the party you supported. Because all votes matter, parties and candidates have more incentive to mobilize more voters.
Third, multiparty democracy shouldn’t seem radical because it embodies the same values — fluid compromise and flexible coalition building — that the Framers, particularly James Madison, saw as essential to self-governance. The Framers despised political parties, but what they really feared was a binary two-party system. They feared that if just one party became the majority, it would use its power to abuse the remaining minority party, and that close two-party competition would be destabilizing. They were spot-on.
Reform is hard, but not impossible
Maybe you’re thinking: Okay, that all makes sense. But c’mon: We can barely pass a budget on time. How are we going to upend our entire voting system?
We’re not — at least not immediately. The electoral reforms I propose would be a major change. And it would take a broad social movement and lots of public pressure to help bring about change.
But the seeds for reform need to be planted first.
Change is already taking root at the state and local levels. Maine adopted ranked-choice voting in 2018. New York City adopted ranked-choice voting in 2019, joining several other major cities, and Massachusetts may adopt it in 2020. Democracy reform in the US has almost always been a state-led process. And there are plenty of state-level opportunities.
Moreover, the history of American democracy is also a history of reform. We’ve repeatedly changed our voting rules, making our democracy more inclusive and representative. The primaries, direct elections of senators, and single-member districts were all affirmative reforms that changed American democracy.
In the first two decades of the 20th century, most Western European democracies adopted proportional representation. Though each country had its own distinct path, in each country a majority of democratically elected representatives moved to a different voting system because they thought it would be an improvement over the status quo. In the 1990s, New Zealand ditched first-past-the-post elections and adopted a version of proportional representation, responding to massive public discontent with the existing system.
Reform is always unlikely. But moments do arise when the case for reform becomes so clear, and the demand so high, that it becomes only a matter of time before the right spark catches and reform seems inevitable.
Perhaps our current discontent is combustible enough for that coming spark. Dissatisfaction with and distrust in our current political system is at its highest levels in the history of modern polling, and probably comparable to levels in the lead-up to the Progressive Era. The raw material for a major democracy reform movement exists.
But it is still inchoate. That means it will depend on what we all do to help it grow and develop. The first step is understanding just how dangerous the status quo would be, if left to continue its democracy-destroying doom loop.
Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at the think tank New America, co-host of the Politics in Question podcast, and author of the new book, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.


vox--2020-01-23--Marijuana legalization is about to have a huge year

It looks like 2020 could be a very big year for marijuana legalization .
The year began with a bang when Illinois started recreational marijuana sales , after the state became the 10th in the country and the second in the Midwest to legalize marijuana .
It ’ s a big deal because Illinois is a big state — the sixth most populous overall and the second most populous to legalize pot — but also because of how Illinois legalized : It ’ s the first state to allow recreational sales through the legislature , meaning state lawmakers and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ typically cautious politicians signed off on legalization is a testament to its growing political appeal .
Several state governments could follow Illinois ’ s lead this year .
In New York , Gov .
Andrew Cuomo has pushed for legalization — and it almost passed in 2019 , with a deal falling apart at the last minute due to disagreements about how the tax revenue raised should be used and how to help people hurt by the war on weed .
In New Mexico , Gov .
Michelle Lujan Grisham has made it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s unclear if the legislature is ready to do so .
In Vermont , Gov .
Phil Scott , who legalized marijuana possession but not sales , now may be open to legalizing sales .
Connecticut and Rhode Island also could legalize through their legislatures .
Most states that have legalized so far , however , have done so through ballot initiatives , and many more may join them .
Recreational legalization could end up on the ballot this year in Arizona , Arkansas , Missouri , Montana , New Jersey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ South Dakota .
Idaho , Mississippi , Nebraska , and South Dakota may vote on medical marijuana this year too .
Not all of these are guaranteed to appear on the ballot , much less win a vote , but activists are trying .
( Mona Zhang at Politico and Tom Angell at Forbes have good rundowns of these efforts . )
Separately , Virginia is likely to decriminalize marijuana , which would keep some penalties on pot , particularly fines , but attempt to remove the threat of arrest , jail , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ means at least 18 states stand to loosen their marijuana laws just this year .
Although marijuana is legal under some states ’ laws , it remains illegal under federal law — creating all sorts of hurdles , from taxing to banking to interstate commerce , even in places where weed is legal under state law .
President Donald Trump has maintained that status quo , opposing federal legalization but letting states decide the issue for themselves .
It ’ s notable , then , that all the higher-polling Democratic presidential candidates , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support legalizing pot .
That could make a big difference in spurring Congress to take action or if , as Bernie Sanders promised , the next president takes executive action to pull back prohibition .
A lot of this is still up in the air .
But it ’ s all buoyed by one fact : Marijuana legalization is very popular nationwide , according to the most recent polls .
That ’ s emboldening both activists and lawmakers to take the issue far more seriously than in years past .
According to Gallup @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adults supported marijuana legalization in 2001 .
By 2019 , that was up to 66 percent — a full two-thirds .
Gallup is not alone in its findings .
Another poll , from the Pew Research Center , found 67 percent of Americans now back marijuana legalization , up from less than half of that two decades prior .
Opposition to legalization also dropped to 32 percent , down from almost double that two decades before .
Pew also asked respondents what kind of legalization they back .
About 59 percent said they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 32 percent said they only want medical legalization .
Only 8 percent said neither .
To put it another way : Fewer than one in 10 Americans agree with the current federal policy on marijuana .
Pew found that even a majority — 55 percent — of Republicans , who are generally more skeptical of drug policy reform , support legalizing pot ( though it ’ s unclear if some of them only back medical legalization ) .
Gallup produced similar findings , with 51 percent of Republicans backing legalization .
This means @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This helps explain why marijuana legalization has spread to 10 states and Washington , DC , with at least one marijuana legalization victory during each of the past four federal elections .
That ’ s why the Democratic candidates have overwhelmingly landed on the side of legalization .
It ’ s why Trump ’ s administration , despite at first hinting at a renewed war on marijuana , has mostly taken a hands-off approach to states that legalize .
And it ’ s why more states are now moving toward legalization .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the harms of marijuana prohibition : the hundreds of thousands of arrests around the US , the racial disparities behind those arrests , and the billions of dollars that flow from the black market for illicit marijuana to drug cartels that then use the money for violent operations around the world .
All of this , legalization advocates say , will outweigh any of the potential downsides — such as increased cannabis use — that might come with legalization .
Opponents , however , claim that legalization will enable a huge marijuana industry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They point to America ’ s experiences with the alcohol and tobacco industries in particular , which have built their financial empires in large part on some of the heaviest consumers of their products .
This could result in more people using pot , even if it leads to negative health consequences .
If you want to understand why supporters keep winning , just look to the polling : Americans overwhelmingly and increasingly agree that it ’ s time to legalize pot .
For more on marijuana legalization , read Vox ’ s @ @

It looks like 2020 could be a very big year for marijuana legalization.
The year began with a bang when Illinois started recreational marijuana sales, after the state became the 10th in the country and the second in the Midwest to legalize marijuana.
It’s a big deal because Illinois is a big state — the sixth most populous overall and the second most populous to legalize pot — but also because of how Illinois legalized: It’s the first state to allow recreational sales through the legislature, meaning state lawmakers and the governor signed off on it. That typically cautious politicians signed off on legalization is a testament to its growing political appeal.
Several state governments could follow Illinois’s lead this year. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pushed for legalization — and it almost passed in 2019, with a deal falling apart at the last minute due to disagreements about how the tax revenue raised should be used and how to help people hurt by the war on weed. In New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has made it a priority to legalize marijuana, though it’s unclear if the legislature is ready to do so. In Vermont, Gov. Phil Scott, who legalized marijuana possession but not sales, now may be open to legalizing sales. Connecticut and Rhode Island also could legalize through their legislatures.
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Most states that have legalized so far, however, have done so through ballot initiatives, and many more may join them. Recreational legalization could end up on the ballot this year in Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Idaho, Mississippi, Nebraska, and South Dakota may vote on medical marijuana this year too. Not all of these are guaranteed to appear on the ballot, much less win a vote, but activists are trying. (Mona Zhang at Politico and Tom Angell at Forbes have good rundowns of these efforts.)
Separately, Virginia is likely to decriminalize marijuana, which would keep some penalties on pot, particularly fines, but attempt to remove the threat of arrest, jail, or prison.
In all, that means at least 18 states stand to loosen their marijuana laws just this year.
Although marijuana is legal under some states’ laws, it remains illegal under federal law — creating all sorts of hurdles, from taxing to banking to interstate commerce, even in places where weed is legal under state law. President Donald Trump has maintained that status quo, opposing federal legalization but letting states decide the issue for themselves.
It’s notable, then, that all the higher-polling Democratic presidential candidates, with the exception of Joe Biden, support legalizing pot. That could make a big difference in spurring Congress to take action or if, as Bernie Sanders promised, the next president takes executive action to pull back prohibition.
A lot of this is still up in the air. But it’s all buoyed by one fact: Marijuana legalization is very popular nationwide, according to the most recent polls. That’s emboldening both activists and lawmakers to take the issue far more seriously than in years past.
Marijuana legalization is very popular
According to Gallup, only about 34 percent of US adults supported marijuana legalization in 2001. By 2019, that was up to 66 percent — a full two-thirds.
Gallup is not alone in its findings. Another poll, from the Pew Research Center, found 67 percent of Americans now back marijuana legalization, up from less than half of that two decades prior. Opposition to legalization also dropped to 32 percent, down from almost double that two decades before.
Pew also asked respondents what kind of legalization they back. About 59 percent said they want medical and recreational legalization, while 32 percent said they only want medical legalization. Only 8 percent said neither.
To put it another way: Fewer than one in 10 Americans agree with the current federal policy on marijuana.
Pew found that even a majority — 55 percent — of Republicans, who are generally more skeptical of drug policy reform, support legalizing pot (though it’s unclear if some of them only back medical legalization). Gallup produced similar findings, with 51 percent of Republicans backing legalization. This means a bipartisan majority now backs the change.
This helps explain why marijuana legalization has spread to, besides Illinois, 10 states and Washington, DC, with at least one marijuana legalization victory during each of the past four federal elections. That’s why the Democratic candidates have overwhelmingly landed on the side of legalization. It’s why Trump’s administration, despite at first hinting at a renewed war on marijuana, has mostly taken a hands-off approach to states that legalize. And it’s why more states are now moving toward legalization.
Supporters of legalization argue that it eliminates the harms of marijuana prohibition: the hundreds of thousands of arrests around the US, the racial disparities behind those arrests, and the billions of dollars that flow from the black market for illicit marijuana to drug cartels that then use the money for violent operations around the world. All of this, legalization advocates say, will outweigh any of the potential downsides — such as increased cannabis use — that might come with legalization.
Opponents, however, claim that legalization will enable a huge marijuana industry that will market the drug irresponsibly. They point to America’s experiences with the alcohol and tobacco industries in particular, which have built their financial empires in large part on some of the heaviest consumers of their products. This could result in more people using pot, even if it leads to negative health consequences.
If you want to understand why supporters keep winning, just look to the polling: Americans overwhelmingly and increasingly agree that it’s time to legalize pot.
For more on marijuana legalization, read Vox’s explainer.