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

Yeah let's do what the billionaire wants.

[cahuenga]

Surely he represents the average californian

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

[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)?