Centerblue.org

I love California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don’t care if he’s a Republican. Yes it’s true his record on some liberal issues is less than stellar, such as on gay rights/marriage, though he’s still better on those than most Republicans. But on the issue of the environment, which I consider to be the single most important issue of our time, there is no politician of either party that even comes close to Arnold’s stewardship.

Defying Bush and many Republicans, he has embraced the global warming crisis and has used California’s clout as the world’s sixth largest economy to impose tough restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. The rest of the country benefits from this–if carmakers, for example, are forced to build more fuel-efficient vehicles for California they are better off doing it for the whole country rather than keeping different sets of standards by state. This becomes even more true as more and more states follow California’s brave lead on this issue.

He has vowed to restore California’s emission levels to 1990 levels by the year 2020, and bypassed Bush entirely by meeting with Tony Blair recently to get California to participate in the same carbon “cap and trade” program being used in Europe.

He is determined to inject the global warming debate into the 2008 presidential election, even though he’s not eligible to run himself because he wasn’t born in America:

“There is a whole new movement because of the change of people sent to Washington [referring to Democrats]. “We want to put the spotlight on this issue in America. It has to become a debate in the presidential election. It has to become an issue.”

He is being so influential in Republican circles on the issue that GOP contenders for president are calling him to consult about the issue.

He is also wise enough to see how leadership on the environment can serve to repair America’s image in the world that has been so badly tattered by Iraq:

“The war has dragged us down. There’s no reason to get political, that’s just the way it is. But you can balance it by being a great leader in the environment. The more America shows leadership in that area, the more we will be loved for that as much as they love us for our hamburgers and for our jeans and for our movies and for our music.”

I hope he is successful in what he’s seeking to do–and if I were a Californian he’d be the first Republican I ever voted for. It just goes to show that good common-sense politics can span both parties–even if it’s unfortunately rare.

Besides, the tech geek and transhumanist in me is a huge fan of his “Terminator” movies.

There is a bill sitting on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk that if signed could fundamentally alter the way presidential elections are conducted in this country.

Currently the president is elected via the Electoral College, with electors drawn from each state. Each state’s electors pledge (though I believe are not required) to cast their votes in favor of the presidential candidate garnering a majority of votes in their respective states.

This system has led to problems, as the 2000 election demonstrated painfully–where the candidate who received a majority of the popular vote did not in fact win the presidency, because he managed to gain a majority of the electoral votes.

Now a new idea has emerged, based on the concept of interstate compacts akin to the ones that permit the Powerball lottery. In such compacts a state agrees with other states to respect the decisions of other states when it comes to doing something. In the case of the Powerball, each participating state agrees to honor a winning ticket as valid even though it was sold in another state.

With respect to the Electoral College, the idea (first advanced by inventor John R. Koza), the interstate compact would say that each participating state promises to cast its electoral votes for the candidate that wins the popular vote nationwide. If California enacts the legislation it would embolden many other states to do the same. The winner of the presidential contest would then truly be up to a majority of the people.

The justifications for the electoral college no longer apply. According to a paper written by a deputy director of the FEC Office of Election Administration, the primary reason for adopting the Electoral College as opposed to election by popular vote was the fear that the lack of readily available information about candidates from elsewhere would cause people to vote for “home grown” people from their own states, making a national vote unworkable and giving undue power to the most populated state. Instead, the founding fathers decided to put the presidential election in the hands of a small group of well-educated, well-informed electors that could cast their votes with full information and free of the influences of home states or political parties.

Clearly this rationale is greatly outdated. All information about all candidates are instantaneously available in a way not possible two centuries ago.

The author of the above-referenced paper makes some interesting arguments for keeping the Electoral College, such as the enhancement of power for minority groups (at least in theory, if a minority group is a majority in a state, it will have more power through the Electoral College than it would through popular vote alone). Another argument is that the College requires distributed popular support to win, rather than allowing a candidate to focus on a few populated areas at the expense of rural ones.

Ultimately I don’t think any of these arguments outweigh the value of a true popular vote. In practice I haven’t seen minority voting power enhanced in any state–and those states that have or someday may have majorities of non-white people (such as hispanics in southwest states) are not terribly influential in deciding presidential elections anyway. Additionally, as the 2004 presidential contest made clear it is possible to win by popular vote even if you do not garner a majority of votes in densely populated areas (Bush got several million more votes than Kerry even though Kerry carried most of the big cities on the coasts).

Eliminating the Electoral College would force candidates to campaign nationwide instead of just focusing on a few battleground states. There are many states that never see much of a candidate, because the state is guaranteed to go either “red” or “blue.” Today, my vote for a Democrat for President is about as valuable as spitting in the wind in reliably “red” Virginia; a popular vote count would make each vote matter as much as every other.

It will be interesting to see whether Schwarzenegger signs the bill, and how it will affect the 2008 election if he does.

In the face of an inexcusable lack of action on the part of the federal government, the onus of reducing global warming emissions has fallen on the individual states. California is leading the way, first by requiring auto emission reductions, and now by requiring industry to lower emissions 25% by 2020. An emissions trading market will assist in that endeavor.

The bill was was negotiated between the Democratic-controlled Assembly and Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, further cementing his credentials as one of the rare Republicans who act as responsible stewards of the environment. Not all Republicans were so sanguine: “This bill is the road to economic ruin for California,” screamed Chicken Little Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth.

Whatever. California has always led the way in instituting public policy reforms that are later adopted throughout the rest of the country. Its example is already being heeded in some measure by many other states. California’s insistence on auto emissions caps and refusing to enter long-term contracts with out-of-state utility companies who don’t reduce emissions will also have incidental benefits for other states, as companies are more likely to adopt a uniform stricter standard than to keep a patchwork of products by state.

Keep up the great work, California..the rest of the country will eventually heed you, despite Congress’s inane inaction.