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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 richtopia on Saturday April 14 2018, @05:35PM (1 child)
Instead of California segmenting itself, there should be provisions on the federal level for a maximum state size. I'm biased towards balkanization, so I would probably suggest 5% total population. The top states by population are: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population)
California - 12%
Texas - 9%
Florida - 6%
New York - 6%
Pennsylvania - 4%
Only two states have been created by the division of other states: Kentucky and West Virginia. Many of the states were drawn in order to deal with the political issue of slavery. Perhaps with some more mechanical rules in place on what constitutes a state political reasons for a state's creation can be reduced, and we could perhaps focus on the long term issues like culture and economy.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:28AM
I agree that it's time to throw out the Constitution and start from scratch. A new constitutional convention should be convened immediately after the November elections.
Now, I have a few questions about your proposal, though. First, what is the difference between segmenting a state and having federal limits on state size? Or are you suggesting we should do away with almost half the population of Texas?
And most important, why would you want this federal limit on the size of a state? Can we also have a minimum size? Like, since Montana has practically nobody in it, can we just combine them with the two Dakotas? They still would have less than 20% of the population of New York City. Or are you suggesting that we force people from populous states to move to less populous ones?
You are still welcome on my lawn.