This note introduces our Summer 2024 issue.

American politics is more polarized than ever. In November we face another high-stakes election, pitting a fragile Democratic coalition against Donald Trump, who has said he will only be a dictator for the first day of his second term. How can we achieve a healthier democracy?

In our forum, Lee Drutman argues that we need to expand our two-party system. With just two major parties to choose from, lots of voters are pressured to stick with a team they do not like because the other side is far worse. Others are simply left out—casting their precious votes for third parties that can’t win or withdrawing from politics altogether.

Drutman’s solution is to revive fusion voting, an electoral system that allows different parties to nominate the same candidate for public office and run the candidate on their own ballot line. It was once the norm in U.S. politics, fostering a vibrant, multiparty political culture. But it started to be banned in the early twentieth century and remains legal today only in a handful of states. Bringing it back, Drutman urges, would empower new parties and give far more people a voice. This is a long-term project, but we can—we must—start now.

Can fusion be restored? Is it the best path to a more robust democracy? A range of reformers, organizers, and scholars weigh in, including former candidate for Massachusetts governor Danielle Allen, Working Families Party national director Maurice Mitchell, and New Party founder Joel Rogers. Most agree that democracy depends on strong parties. Some question how much fusion voting would help. Others propose different reforms or look to social movements as the primary drivers of change.

Also in this issue, contributors ask how public narratives advance or foreclose democratic possibilities. Honora Spicer reports from the U.S.-Mexico border, where a U.S. postal route was recently designated a national historic trail, eliding stories of exclusion hiding in plain sight. Kevin Donovan looks behind seemingly neutral accounting conventions, showing how they insulate political consequences from public debate.

And in a review of three new books, historian Elizabeth Catte dismantles political myths about poor and rural white people, clarifying who is responsible for their suffering and abandonment. She sees a way forward in Reverend William Barber’s call for “moral fusion”—a movement built on bottom-up organization and solidarity among all those grieving in our broken democracy.