Investor Tim Draper Pushes Ballot Measure Splitting California Into 3 States (sfgate.com)

"One of several proposals aiming to split California into multiple smaller states has reportedly reached an important new goal thanks in large part to the efforts of its billionaire champion," writes schwit1. SFGate reports: Venture capitalist Tim Draper, who previously pushed a proposal that would split California into six states, says that his three-state proposal has enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. On Thursday, Draper said in a statement that the "CAL 3" initiative has collected over 600,000 signatures from Californians who would like to see the state split into three. An initiative needs 366,000 signatures to appear on the ballot. "This is an unprecedented show of support on behalf of every corner of California to create three state governments that emphasize representation, responsiveness, reliability and regional identity," Draper said.
The U.S. Congress would still need to approve the change -- and it's probably useful to remember what happened when Draper tried splitting California into six states. He ultimately turned in 1.3 million signatures for a ballot measure in 2014, "only to see nearly half of them disqualified.

"He ended up about 100,000 short of the valid signatures he needed."

Comments

Senators

[CohibaVancouver]

It has always seemed weird to me that California has the same number of senators in Washington as North Dakota and Vermont.

Re: Senators

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how he fails to understand anything. It's a weird system, essentially making some people in extremely rural areas have a massively disproportionate influence on the 99% of the rest of the country.

Re: Senators

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank God for the 17th Amendment, or this would be the United States of New York and California.

Re: Senators

[DatbeDank]

That's by design. I'll assume you're not an American and say this: the system is designed to allow equal weighted representation of high VS low population areas. It's the reason we have a large country with a lot of people in it as a democracy and not like China, a large country with a lot of people being governed by a dictator.

Re: Senators

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really care about the pedantry of the matter.

The bottom-line is it results in a country where a few people have much greater say in governance, which is antithetical to equitable representation and ensures rural bean farmers an outsized foothold in Washington.

Re: Senators

[whoever57]

I doubt that the designers envisaged such a large disparity representation that this creates. 37M in CA vs. Wyoming with about .5M?

Re: Senators

[ooloorie]

The intent is to require broad geographic as well as popular consensus to pass laws that apply to the entire country, thereby protecting minority rights from the tyranny of a 50%+1 majority concentrated in any one place.

I think it's even simpler than that: the US was intended as a voluntary union of states, and "you join us and you lose all ability to control your own future" is not a particularly good selling point for a political union.

Re: Senators

[reboot246]

I think their misunderstanding is that they think a "state" is simply a subdivision of a national government. It's not. "State" is another term for "country". We're a union of semi-independent countries that came together for common defense and free trade across state lines. The goal of the Constitution was to limit the power of the central government and keep most governing at the state and local level. It has failed, mainly through apathy and ignorance.

Re: Senators

[dgatwood]

No it isn't. If ten people live on a forested mountain, the one hundred people in the town in the next valley should not be able to vote to deforest the mountain.

Similarly, if one hundred people live on a forested mountain, the ten people in the next town over and the 20 people in a different nearby town should not be able to vote to deforest the mountain.

The problem is that the founding fathers never imagined that we would have a single state that is almost two orders of magnitude larger than the smallest state. The result of that huge population difference is twofold:

• Thanks to the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, it is impossible to properly apportion representatives in the House proportionate to the number of people. If Wyoming gets a single representative (the minimum), then California should have 68 representatives. Instead, it has only 53.
• Because the electoral college elector count is the sum of the senators and representatives, the disproportional allocation of electors is further magnified.

The net result is that Wyoming has 3 electors and California has 55, whereas proportional to the population, California would have 204. If California were three states, it would still probably not have more than 53 representatives (but it might). It would, however, have 6 senators instead of two, and thus four additional electors. 59 electors is a relatively small improvement, but it can't hurt. If California split into six states (to get within an order of magnitude of Wyoming), that would be ten extra electors.

The only real long-term fix is to either replace PAA 1929 with a true proportional representation law or get the courts to overturn PAA 1929 as an unconstitutional violation of Article I Section 2 Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution as amended. Then change the electoral college so that it matches the congressional behavior, i.e. president is elected by electors proportional to the population, and the vice president (and president of the senate) is elected by two electors per state.

Re: Senators

[ooloorie]

That assumes that the interests of all rural states are the same, that rural states are less populous, and that states are either rural, or not.

I made no such assumption; I mentioned "rural states" because that's what the GP talked about. My point is that statements like "essentially making some people in extremely rural areas have a massively disproportionate influence on the 99% of the rest of the country" pose a false dichotomy, they take it as a given that either one kind of state dictates to the other kind of state or vice versa, with no other possibilities. In fact, people in neither state should have "massive influence" on anybody in another state; if California wants to be a left wing welfare state, Utah wants to be a theocracy, and Texas wants to be a libertarian free market state, they shouldn't be able to impose their preference on each other through the federal government. The reason why progressive and left leaning states want to use the federal government to impose their will on everybody else is because if they don't, people just run away from their uncompetitive high tax regimes. But that ought to be their problem, not anybody else's.

Re: Senators

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny that you think Trump getting elected is evidence of a failed Republic, when in fact it was perfection.

A horde of imported voters in urban centers, dredged up by elitist media barrons and corporatists from their gated white communities, tried to elect a lying globalist hag for a country that largely did not agree with her corrupt and dangerous identity politics.

In other words, your ilk tried your best to cut down our forest, and are now outraged that the brilliant system designed to stop you actually worked.

Re: Senators

[JDevers]

False: in 1776 Virginia had roughly 447,000 people and Georgia had roughly 23,000. If the founders actually had a population that disproportionate how could they not imagine the disparity between California (39 million) and Wyoming (600,000)?

Re: Senators

[DNS-and-BIND]

Well, let's be honest: you SJW communists would really be happier in another country besides America. It's constant stress living with us deplorables on a daily basis. This depletes your telomeres and shortens your life. Really. In fact, that's one of the arguments you use against free speech: that when your telemeres are shortened by hearing our ideas, that counts as violence, and thus when you hear us speak we are committing violence on you. Yup.

If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech - at least certain types of speech - can be a form of violence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html

So, where will you be going? It must be a relief to finally come to this conclusion. Canada? France? There are the countries that have implemented your left-wing systems, so you'll obviously want to check those out: Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba. Bon Voyage! Good luck in your stress-free home where our words can't harm you.

Yeah let's do what the billionaire wants.

[cahuenga]

Surely he represents the average californian

Yeah right...

[skam240]

From tfa

"The reasoning behind the proposal is that California has gotten too big to be governed effectively"

Nonsense, the reason for this is to break up the largest Blue state to conservative's advantage.

Re:Ineffective government due to one party control

[skam240]

California is running a budget surplus and has the most successful economy in the country. Meanwhile the vast majority of red states face the same issues of ideological super majority you atribute to California and can't generate enough wealth to support their backwards economies without suckling at the feds teat. If you're so concerned over the effectiveness of state governments maybe you should try generally voting for Democrats. It seems to have worked out well for the majorities in Blue states

Furthermore, you don't seem to know how California divides politically. "Southern California" would most certainly be red.

He's not fooling anyone

[rsilvergun]

he just wants to get the electoral votes of the right wing parts of California so he can push an agenda of low taxes, fewer social services and fewer worker protections. As an added bonus California's strong consumer protection laws benefit us all since they're too large a market to ignore, but this would split that market up into manageable chunks diluting their effect.

California & New York are more or less the last bastions of civilization in the USA. They're the one place that was more or less untouched by Tea Party style trickle down low or no regulation politics. This would suck for the entire United States (including rural California) except for the billionaire class.

Bottom line, we don't need to break up because we have nothing in common. 99% of us are members of the working class. That more than anything is what binds us, makes a whole. And it's also why guys like this want to split us up.

Re:Draper has gerrymandered California

[ooloorie]

On the other hand you seem to be advocating that people living with lots of empty land around them ought to have vastly more influence than town dwellers presumably because you live there and like having an excess of power.

You are posing a false dichotomy, namely that either California dictates to Nebraska how to live, or that Nebraska dictates to California how to live; either of those is tyrannical.

The correct answer is, in fact, that neither California nor Nebraska should have power over each other; the powers of the federal government should be limited to ensure that California and Nebraska coexist in a peaceful, well-defended union that allows free movement of people, goods, and services within the union. It's only progressive pricks that have taken this original, good idea and tried to turn it into an authoritarian central state. And the EU is, of course, doing the same thing.

(And, in fact, I live in California, but I would like California to have less power.)

Re:Draper has gerrymandered California

[ooloorie]

What you call "backwater" is mainstream American. It's coastal California that's way out of touch.

And mainstream America doesn't even want to tell Californians how to live, mainstream America simply wants to be left alone by Californians. It's California that keeps insisting on pushing their environmental, welfare, social justice, and immigration agenda onto the rest of the country.