With lessons learned from the national elections of 2000 and 2002, this issue focuses on the specific challenges and opportunities in political reform that lie ahead. Mark Schmitt, director of the Program on Governance and Public Policy of the Open Society Institute, argues that we are in the era of the fifty fifty nation, with an electorate divided almost evenly between the two major parties, and elections decided by marginal voters along the dividing lines. Political scholar Thomas E. Patterson analyzes the downturn in voter turnout and proposed remedies to reverse this trend. The Center for Voting and Democracy provide several articles that focus on the relationships among incumbency, redistricting, and electoral competitiveness in making a case for substantive voting system reform. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer and Steve Brigham, from AmericaSpeaks, note the difficulties in conducting town hall deliverations in the modern age and detail the facilitated dialogues they conducted among nearly five thousand New Yorkers about the future of Ground Zero. Leonard J. Duhl, M.D., one of the founders of the Healthy Cities/Healthy Communities movement, provides a fitting close with the remarks on community first delivered at a ceremony at the Pan American Health Organization, where he received the Abraham Horvitz Award in recognition of his important contributions to improving health in the Americas.
With scholarship and voices from the field, this issue will provide inspiration and insight to the political reform community at large as we collectively take up the continuing work of improving our democracy.