Author: TheConversation

Making votes count: Other options for replacing the Electoral College

By Joshua Holzer, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Westminster College The United States is the only democracy in the world where a presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election. Thanks to the Electoral College, that has happened five times in the country’s history, including in 2000 and 2016. Rather than totaling up how many people vote for each candidate nationwide and declaring a winner, the U.S. assigns each state a number of electoral votes based on how many representatives and senators are sent to Congress. Washington, D.C. gets three. In D.C. and 48...

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George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery deaths show how racism is a life-threatening conditions for black men

By Shervin Assari, Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science High-profile police shootings and deaths of black men in custody – or even while out jogging – bring cries of racism across the country. The May 25 death of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis and the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia on Feb. 23, 2020 by a white father and son have resulted in outrage and protests in cities across the United States. But, as a public health researcher who studies the effects of racism on...

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Staying afloat during the pandemic: COVID-19 exposed fissures in our social safety net

By Paul Shafer, Assistant Professor, Health Law, Policy, and Management, Boston University The United States is experiencing its steepest economic slide in modern history. Tens of millions of Americans have filed new unemployment claims as the coronavirus shutters businesses and forces companies to lay off staff. People need support to help them through the crisis in a few key ways – cash to meet immediate financial needs, health care to cover them should they become ill and housing even if they can’t make rent. Despite federal stimulus efforts north of US$2 trillion – so far – it is likely...

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Patterns of Misconduct: Study finds police officers accused of abuse have a history of citizen complaints

By Jill McCorkel, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Villanova University As protests against police violence and racism continue in cities throughout the United States, the public is learning that several of the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville share a history of complaints by citizens of brutality or misconduct. Decades of research on police shootings and brutality reveal that officers with a history of shooting civilians, for example, are much more likely to do so in the future compared to other officers. A similar pattern holds for misconduct complaints. Officers...

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Mobile phone video of brutality against Black people should be considered sacred like lynching photos

By Allissa V. Richardson, Assistant Professor of Journalism, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism As Ahmaud Arbery fell to the ground, the sound of the gunshot that took his life echoed loudly throughout his Georgia neighborhood. I rewound the video of his killing. Each time I viewed it, I was drawn first to the young black jogger’s seemingly carefree stride, which was halted by two white men in a white pickup truck. Then I peered at Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Trevor, 34, who confronted Arbery in their suburban community. I knew that the...

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Redlining from past decades positioned communities for greater risk during coronavirus crisis

By Jeremy Németh, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Colorado Denver; Sarah Rowan, Assistant Professor of Medicine-Infectious Disease, University of Colorado Denver Public health officials and urban planners have long known that one’s ZIP code is an especially reliable indicator of educational attainment, lifetime earnings and even life expectancy. ZIP code is also a great indicator of risk for disease transmission. Cities across the United States, lower-income communities of color are experiencing disproportionately high rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death. One set of explanations for these geographical disparities focuses on the individual circumstances of neighborhood...

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