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GOP plans to compete on ballot-harvesting in California

Republicans continue to suspect they lost several close House races in California last fall because a new state law permits campaigns to collect mail ballots directly from voters, suggesting the system is ripe for fraudulent abuse. But now the GOP is quietly working on plans to improve their own ballot-harvesting operations in the nation's most populous state, hoping that helps grow their portion of delegation in 2020 from only seven of the 53 seats.

"We got our clocks cleaned," Minnesota's Tom Emmer, the new chairman of the House GOP campaign operation told GOP donors in a private conference call last month, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. "While the Democrats had an operation on the ground that was actually doing the ballot-harvesting, we did not have a corresponding organization that was doing that," Emmer said, promising: "That won't happen again."


That GOP vow to fight back is complicated by a significant public relations problem – the exposure of an illegal 2018 ballot-harvesting scheme on behalf of a Republican candidate that has prompted North Carolina to keep one House seat vacant until a special election this fall.

The suspicions about what happened in California centers on the potential for nefarious behavior when ballots completed and sealed in envelopes by voters are then put in the hands of partisan operatives with the promise of a safe delivery to election centers. The alleged ballot tampering in North Carolina includes filling out, or forging, ballots without the voters' knowledge or consent.

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The AI Race We Need: For a Better Future, Not Against Another Nation

The concept of AI hovering among the public.

Getty Images, J Studios

The AI Race We Need: For a Better Future, Not Against Another Nation

The AI race that warrants the lion’s share of our attention and resources is not the one with China. Both superpowers should stop hurriedly pursuing AI advances for the sake of “beating” the other. We’ve seen such a race before. Both participants lose. The real race is against an unacceptable status quo: declining lifespans, increasing income inequality, intensifying climate chaos, and destabilizing politics. That status quo will drag on, absent the sorts of drastic improvements AI can bring about. AI may not solve those problems but it may accelerate our ability to improve collective well-being. That’s a race worth winning.

Geopolitical races have long sapped the U.S. of realizing a better future sooner. The U.S. squandered scarce resources and diverted talented staff to close the alleged missile gap with the USSR. President Dwight D. Eisenhower rightfully noted, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” He realized that every race comes at an immense cost. In this case, the country was “spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

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Third Parties, First Principles: Reshaping Democracy One Reform at a Time

Third Parties, First Principles: Reshaping Democracy One Reform at a Time

Primaries, Preferences, and Participation  — This Week’s Expand Democracy 5

Welcome to the newest edition of The Expand Democracy 5! With Rob Richie’s help (from his journey along the Appalachian Trail!), Eveline Dowling explores: (1) parties and polarization in elections in the UK and Australia; (2) open primaries in the United States; (3) bipartisan views on environmental issues; (4) addressing the voting needs of military families; and (5) this week’s timely links.

In keeping with The Fulcrum’s mission to share ideas that help to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives, we intend to publish The Expand Democracy 5 in The Fulcrum each Friday.

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Could Splits Within the GOP Over Economic Policy Hurt the Trump Administration?

With Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) by his side President Donald Trump speaks to the press following a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Tasos Katopodis

Could Splits Within the GOP Over Economic Policy Hurt the Trump Administration?

Republican U.S. Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri is an unusual combo of right and left politics—kind of like an elephant combined with a donkey combined with a polar bear. And, yet, his views may augur the future of the Republican Party.

Many people view the Republican and Democratic parties as ideological monoliths, run by hardcore partisans and implacably positioned against each other. But, in fact, both parties have their internal divisions, influenced by various outside organizations. In the GOP, an intra-party battle is brewing between an economic populist wing with its more pro-labor positions and a traditional libertarian wing with its pro-free market stances.

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