A California technology billionaire said on Thursday that his longtime and perhaps quixotic effort to partition the Golden State into multiple new states could soon be put before voters.
Venture capitalist Tim Draper said he had gathered about 600,000 signatures on a petition to put his proposal to divide California on the November ballot, more than the 366,000 needed to qualify. It is his third attempt to get voters to weigh in on his call to break up the most populous U.S. state.
Draper, who in 2014 and 2016 failed in his efforts to win approval for a ballot initiative to divide the state into six parts, said in a news release Thursday that he planned to file the signatures with election officials next week.
[...] To go into effect, California would first have to certify the signatures that Draper has gathered, and then voters in November would need to pass the measure. After that, the U.S. Congress would have to approve it.
Also at The Mercury News and SFGate.
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(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday April 14 2018, @10:31AM
I'm not convinced. Turning one democratic state into two democratic states and one republican state would not increase the size of a democratic majority in the senate or reduce the size of a republican one. If you have a 40/60 split in the current situation then it would become a 41/61 split afterwards. Whichever party had a majority would still have a majority, but it would increase the chance of one of the 3 Californias becoming a swing state and give both parties a chance to turn that into a 21 or 19-seat majority.
sudo mod me up