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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."
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."
It has always seemed weird to me that California has the same number of senators in Washington as North Dakota and Vermont.
Surely he represents the average californian
Yep if a venture capitalist does about anything, it is for their profitability advantage. Just the title of the post made me think he has skin in it
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.
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I don't see how this would benefit anyone other than California... so the state is in trouble because no other state is going along with them...so instead of implementing some constraint when they make up new "laws" let's impose our will on others and take them down as well.
I do not oppose the idea of splitting CA into 3 or even 6 states because that would mean more senators. With a majority in the senate we could get more of our federal tax dollars back to pay for badly needed infrastructure projects (that of course assumes they would work together).
I disagree with these specific divisions though. The man funding this want to make silicon valley its own state. I would prefer to make any new divisions horizontal instead of cutting out a small area and calling it state.
Of course all of this is mute because congress will not let CA split. We already voted to split once and congress said "NO".
Tim doesn't understand the long-term implications of this.
It has always seemed weird to me that California has the same number of senators in Washington as North Dakota and Vermont.
Short version: Works as intended. Small states supposed to have disproportionate power. Forces more compromise.
... and in those days there was probably a large degree of truth to it. Today the Senate is a bit closer in composition to the House due to direct election so we have lost some of those benefits. However the protection of the small states still persists.
Long version:
The organization of the US government is heavily influenced by the concept of checks and balances, forced compromise. Power spread among the three branches of government, executive, legislature, judicial. Power spread among the interests of the people and the interests of the states. Power spread among the slowly changing and the rapidly changing. Power spread among the large and the small states.
The Senate was designed to represent the state governments themselves and to be slowly changing (6 year terms rather than 2). Originally the senators were selected by the state governments. In 1913 things were changed so that Senators were directly elected by the people.
The Senate was also designed specifically so that the large states could not dominate the small states, effectively making them vassals. This was an essential compromise that allowed the formation of the country in the first place. The small states would not have otherwise voted for the constitution if they did not have some sort of protection. The Senate is their protection, their balance, their tool of compromise.
Keep in mind that the founding fathers not only feared powerful central governments, they also feared the poorly educated and overly emotional mob. They were worried the legislature could be dominated by the mob if purely directly elected. The Senate being selected by the state governments was intended to balance the influence of the mob with the influence of the better educated, the latter being more characteristic of those in the state governments compared to the average citizen.
Well, that was the theory
So the allocation of counties represents political senatorial gerrymandering.
Because if nearly half of the 1.3 million signatures collected last time were disqualified and he was still short 100,000 signatures, that would mean that it requires at *LEAST* 750,000 signatures.
The article says over 600,000.... assuming that means between 600,000 and 700,000, that's not going to be enough.
Why were half the signatures from the last one disqualified anyways? What was wrong with them?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
Then why are the 3 subdivisions blue in nature? Its about increasing the proportion of blue in the Senate.
California lacks effective government because it is effectively a one party state, the legislature control by a (super)majority of very liberal democrats. There is no checks and balances of whatever dumbass idea they come up with. There is no forced compromise to moderate the stupidity. Until there is a political balance that forces more moderation and more compromise California will remain ungovernable, as will the 3 democrat controller subdivisions. We'll just have 3 dumbass legislatures that largely agree on things rather than the current. Little to no improvement.
Small states supposed to have disproportionate power.
So some people are more equal than others. Seems fair.
Try reading past the first line. It does wonders for insight, give it a try.
Thank God for the 17th Amendment, or this would be the United States of New York and California.
The 17th Amendment weakened the protections that the Senate was supposed to provide.
Originally the 2 Senators were selected by the state legislatures. So we had the protection of the small states from day 1, this compromise was necessary to get the constitution ratified in the first place, to get a strong central government in the first place.
However by the 17th's allowing the popular election of the Senate we moved one step closer to the "mob rule" the founding father feared, we lost one of those checks and balances, lost a voice that was supposed to represent state interests.
You mean the money for military bases, Indian reservations, bloated government healthcare, and inefficient educational systems? I'd say they thrive.
Receiving federal funds isn't a benefit, it's a liabilitiy.
As California's population grows and it gains more and more representatives in Congress, attempts to break up the state will only increase. No single state should be able to determine how the rest of the country runs.
You erroneously believe that democracy automatically means majoritarianism. States and counties are supposed to represent cohesive populations with shared interests. The people of San Francisco have next to nothing in common with rural California. So in order not to steamroller over the people of rural California, the two populations should be separated.
There have been movements in NY to separate NYC from the rest of upstate NY.
Like California, there is a small, densely populated area and a huge sparsely populated area (by comparison).
The larger, less populated areas don't have the same needs and wants as the big city. Often times, whatever the big city wants to do, the rest of the state gets dragged along for the ride (just because it's the big gorilla in the room), much to the detriment of the rest of the state.
It's completely unbalanced.
A big city can bring in big money, but most of that money usually stays in or near the city and doesn't really help the rest of the state. The big city also tends to drain a lot of resources from the rest of the state, which folks don't like either.
A lot of times, yes, there are big differences in political ideology between the big city and the rest of the state. So why shouldn't the state be separated to keep the two areas happy, instead of being at odds all the time? Let the city do what's good for the city, and let the rest of the state do what's good for them.
For starters, a disclaimer: I'm a foreigner to the US.
But I couldn't help to wonder whether there is a column also for those who want to sign up for California not being split.
Otherwise, it's gonna be another "Brexit" with lots of people scratching their heads and asking "whaaat?!?"
If it gets split into three states, there might be more Republicans in Congress, but it would also create four entirely new Senate seats, with at least three likely to be Democrat. Strategically, it's not a good deal for GOP unless they are extremely confident in taking at least half the new Senate seats.
Draper's split doesn't seem to make that likely. I would imagine California and North California will still be solidly blue, while South California has some potential to pull a single seat in some elections.
You seem to be misunderstanding the dynamics of CA lawmaking. The disfunction stems from populist approach of direct democracy, not from the single party. The partisan politics is simply shifted to be between the progressives and the liberals, rather than the Democrats and Republicans. The checks and balances are still there. But they can't make up for a system in which voters can decide to both increase government services and not pay for them.
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.
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that forces a state to split up when it constitutes some % of the US population vs the combined rest of the states.
It's ridiculous that 5 states in total have 1/3 of the population. We're a republic of states not a giant monolithic slab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
Not sure what that would mean for smaller states. And I'm sure this is probably flame bait
Ok, but to make things fair, there should be at least three CA states, each centered around a major city, and only one rural state, which would still have less people than any of the others. That way, the majority of the people won't get steamrollered by a even more backwater senators representing empty acreage than we already have in this country.
There are very few revolutions that didn't replace one tyrant with another. Mostly because it takes someone who wants to wield power to start a revolution. And these people are rarely the nice kind.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
California weighs disproportionately in the House, as well as elections.
Because the Founders did foresee the evolution of this, they saw it when they were drafting the Constitution, that's why they did this. This is literally basic history on the founding of the United States.
The creation of Checks & Balances and the 3 branches of the Federal Government, to keep any one branch from gaining absolute power.
The splitting of the Legislative branch so there is a section where all states wield equal power, and another where each state is represented based on population. Because both of these are important, not merely one or the other. One is the States being equal participants and having their voice heard, the other is the voice of the people and supposed to be so we still have access to our own government.
The mess our government is in, beholden to Merchants rather than The People or the States, is what was not foreseen or intended. And even that was foreseen, as we used to have laws limiting the influence of Money on our Government, until poor decision-making suddenly gave them free reign to destroy our country in the name of profits.
Well, I don't know about this guy, but looking at his map I see he includes San Francisco and San Mateo in "NorCal", so you're right. NorCal would be dominated by the Bay Area.
I actually agree that coastal/inland in many ways makes sense, although that would create basically permanent and unsolvable inter-state water rights disputes unless the coastal states had non-contiguous inland territories -- something that isn't unprecedented.
I doubt there's any way to divide California into equally sized pieces without favoring the Democrats. As it stands California's massive size favors the Republicans in national power and Democrats locally.
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If the splits were along lines of latitude, it might be worth considering. But the proposed map is obviously along lines to increase or reduce influence of certain groups.
If I'm reading the map right, each of the new states would have one major city. NorCal has the Bay Area (and Sacramento), NewCal has LA, and SoCal has San Diego (and Fresno). Since cities tend to be heavily Democratic and rural areas heavily Republican, both NorCal and SoCal would have exciting elections. NewCal seems pretty likely to be a safe Democratic state.
I'd be a NorCal resident. Given that the entire split won't add Representatives, the balance in the House ought not change. We'd gain four senators. We've had two Democratic senators since, what was it, 1994? The split might add more Democrat senators but might also add Republican ones. It's a little hard to say with just the maps.
Personally, I'll be voting on this based on my local position. What happens nationally won't be on the top of my mind. I'm all on board for dividing the state to get more Senate seats and maybe make some of the new states battleground states so we get attention during presidential elections. Shoot, I liked the six state plan. California is just too large.
Short version: a bunch of weird rationalizations why some people should have votes that count more than other votes.
For state issues, everybody in the state should have a vote of equal weight. For federal issues, everybody in the country should have a vote of equal weight. Making Wyoming votes count 3.6 times what a vote in California gets is bullshit derived from historical accidents. There's no good reason for it and the status quo should change.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
California is running a budget surplus ...
Temporary, and having more to do with the national economy than anything done in California.
... and has the most successful economy in the country.
Irrelevent, the legislature/governor have little to nothing to do with that.
If you're so concerned over the effectiveness of state governments maybe you should try generally voting for Democrats.
You suffer from a reading comprehension problem don't you, is it politically inspired? One party control is the problem. One ideological extreme getting all they want is the problem. You don't want either part in supermajority control. You want balance, you want them to have to compromise, that moderates the stupidity.
Furthermore, you don't seem to know how California divides politically. "Southern California" would most certainly be red.
You are amazingly ignorant of the facts. Examine the blueness on the county results map.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sorry, the rationalization seems to be on your side. You can't get what you want *all* the time so the world is so unfair. In most areas proportionality dominates, there are merely a couple of checks/balances where it does not. This forces compromise which moderates change and often leads to better results.
Some federal issues have massive impact on individual states.
Small states only get equal representation in one part of the legislature. The other part of the legislature, the one that controls spending by the way, has proportional representation.
Try reading past the first line. It does wonders for insight, give it a try.
Yes, it's all reinforcing the concept that the opinion of a person in a small state is more valuable than that of an individual in a large state.
The people get a proportional say in the House. The states get a proportional say in the Senate. No law can be enacted without the "people's" consent via the House. This is part of the checks and balances of the system that prevent the "wolves" from voting on lunch.
"“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”
Benjamin Franklin"
The fear of such mob rule is why we are a republic rather than a pure democracy.
States aren't people, they should have no say. The only thing that matters is the citizenry.
We are a union of states, the contract that created that union gave states a say. The citizenry are actually better off this way. Moderation and compromise are mandated, this often leads to better results than letting the mob have whatever the mob want.
That the partisan fight is largely between two factions of the democratic party rather than democrats vs republicans isn't much of an argument that California is not a one party state. Its actually good evidence of this. :-)
I'm pretty sure you can name a few if there are even plenty of them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.)
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.
That's a false dichotomy. The states only need to be subordinate to the federal government in a few areas: external borders, military defense, freedom of trade within the US, and freedom of movement within the US. That's all we need to have a "United States".
Yes, that's the usual story people like to tell: Southern states implemented slavery and kept it up until the federal government finally stepped in, overrode the states, and took control.
Trouble is, it's completely wrong. Slavery only continued to exist after independence because the federal government protected it, among other things, through the fugitive slave acts. If we had lived up to our original principles, slavery would have collapsed on its own without any civil war. A bloody Civil War wasn't even necessary, given how much stronger the North was than the South; the reason it was so protracted and bloody is because Lincoln was incompetent.
Again, you're posing a false dichotomy. Between a voluntary union of independent states and an all powerful central government, there is a wide range of options. It is perfectly reasonable to advocate for a weaker federal government than we have right now without wanting the US to return to its original founding idea. Your idea that just because we ended up needing a little more federal power, anybody who objects to unlimited federal power should just shut up is unreasonable.
Please, CA is just tied down by its USA ties at this point. Each "State" would be more populous than the entire USA in 1789, and more populous than half the sovereign countries. CA can thrive on its own, perhaps with three provinces.
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San Andreas will do all the work for you.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I am generally for splitting up California and have believed so for 30 years. But I have since learned about what stands in it's way.
On the federal side Senators would be voting to weaken their own votes.
And probably #1 would be interstate water. Southern California depends on northern California's water. I am in Los Angeles. You hear all about droughts here which is 90% BS. The truth is California has a tremendous farming economy. Cheap water is money here and the farms are squeezing the cities. (I personally believe the big cities should be desalinating ocean water by now and just get out of that game.) And it's only become worse with all the environmental protection laws here which took away something like 30% of the water. If you split up the state your opening up the can of worms that is the all the water contracts and agreements; many of which existed before California was a state. Lawsuit city. All the money behind farming will fight this tooth and nail.
I'm an independent and a classical liberal.
Democracy isn't a single form of government, it simply describes all forms of government where the power somehow derives from the people. That encompasses everything from democratic socialism and fascism to minarchism and anarchism. Many forms of democratic government are corrupt, evil and destructive.
Among the many forms of democracy there are, there is only one form of democracy that I actually care for, and that is a classically liberal democracy with small government and free markets.
Well, as you can see from the House, which does have proportional representation, they don't need "affirmative action".
And conservatives and classical liberals would do even better if Democrats weren't so profoundly corrupt and corporatist.
The system was designed to give rural voters more weight in proportion to their population. It was put in place by wealthy landowners who were worried the more populace city dwellers would eventually demand more equitable distribution of wealth. This is also why Senators weren't elected at first.
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If you haven't been living under a rock, you'd know that the House is also gerrymandered out the wazoo. The affirmative action in that case has been ensured by the district borders that have been mapped by optimization algorithms to look like Mandelbrot fractals.
It was also gerrymandered up the wazoo when Democrats were in power. Gerrymandering simply strengthens whoever is currently more popular. If congressional districts were assigned rationally, Democrats wouldn't do very well anyway. The only way Democrats could do well if the US went to strict national popular majorities, but that is utterly unacceptable and incompatible with federalism.
In actual fact, liberals only make up about 17% of the US political spectrum and California is thoroughly unrepresentative of the country. The reason Republicans are so strong is because Democrats have fallen out of favor with the political center: moderates and independents.
I'm a good example of that: I used to be a registered Democrat but loathe what the Democratic party has become over the last decade. I won't vote for Democrats again until they clearly disavow people like Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Corey Booker, and Elizabeth Warren.
Why pay attention to this crazy guy? Every election he does the same thing. Having this guy show up in the feed is the equivalent of seeing a Slashdot story about a rich guy who thinks the earth is flat.
It's also important to note that proportional representation does not result in proportional decision-making power. Consider four states with 1, 3, 4, and 5 representatives (in proportion to their population). There are 13 reps so 7 are needed for a majority.
3+4 makes a majority
3+5 makes a majority
4+5 makes a majority
The 1 rep state has 8.3% of the population and representatives, but has zero power. It has absolutely no influence on the outcome of any decisions made by this hypothetical proportional representation government. The 3 larger states can authoritatively make all decisions by themselves (can always generate a majority). The 1 rep state may as well not exist.
Creating a second legislative branch not based on proportional representation was the founding fathers' way to prevent this type of situation.
All the experienced should recognize the problem of over simplification of design often plaguing political systems and possibly the inability for the amateur programmers (corrupt or not) to grasp the issues involved.
repeat every census:
senators = max( 2, floor( state_population / lowest_state_population ) - 3 )
The concerns about a tyranny of the majority, the urban majorities enslaving the rural minorities they hardly interact with. It is a real problem and it plays out on a macro scale with the exploitation of rural nations (like the colonies; who were aware of this.)
The ERROR of the system is not the population vs geography split which people keep fighting over in extreme terms, it's the extreme simplification nearly everybody uses to think about it. If a programmer was working on such a problem they would debug themselves out of it with some if statements and multiple thresholds if not a simple equation... an AI would create a very complex function...
California deserves much MORE power because we are a democracy limiting them to just 2 senators is crazy. The amount of THEFT of $$$ and influence by the rural population is far greater than the KING was doing to the colonies. There needs to be multiple thresholds.. or an elegant equation. My example above is already better than what we have or has been suggested.
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So where are SoCal and Cal going to get their water and electricity? The agreements were for the full state and I'm sure Oregon and Nevada would love to renegotiate.
To avoid the problem of disqualified signatures torpedoing an initiative, knowledgeable signature gatherers know to verify every signature themselves, and they pay the people who collect the signatures only for ones that pass the verification process. Not only does it avoid the, "Get a signature even if you know the person doesn't qualify" mentality, it gets around the poison pill tactic that some opponents use, where they'll send out people to sign fraudulently (or even put ringers on the signature gathering campaign to do things like collect signatures that they throw away or are for the wrong county, etc.) just to make the proponents think they've achieved their goal and stop too early. Verifying every signature adds to the cost, but it provides clarity on how the effort is really doing and avoids having it all go to waste when the gathering effort comes up short.
One word
WATER
Rick B.
Your point should be tabled until you can provide a superior alternative.
Please don't suggest autocracy. I've had enough of un-elected Mueller shutting down the elected members of the executive branch.
NC citizen here: TX has several revolutionaries who benevolently turned things over after succeeding with their goals.
Btw I'm not lumping corrupt Santa Ana in with that.
Creating a second legislative branch not based on proportional representation was the founding fathers' way to prevent this type of situation.
Be that as it may, if the problem is disproportionate decision-making power then this solution just enshrines a different imbalance, equally detrimental: the smaller states now have disproportionate influence over decisions which will predominately affect the larger states, which puts them in a position to hold the larger states' interests hostage.
The root of the problem is the reliance on a simple majority instead of consensus. Any bill which is opposed by a 49% minority, or even just 25%, needs to go back to the drawing board. The rule should be that a bill can only be passed by a 4/5 supermajority, if not the unanimous consent, of everyone affected by it. (Not all of Congress—that would just make the hostage situation even worse by allowing any minor state to veto any bill until their demands were met. Instead, if you can't achieve a clear consensus, you give the dissenters the ability to opt out in exchange for abstaining; if they take that option then they are no longer affected by the bill and their approval is not required.)
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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