Plan to cut 'failed' California into six states likely to go to a ballot
Backers of a plan to cut "failed" California into six states will reveal today that they now have enough signatures to get their proposal on a general-election ballot in the state.
Six states: The new-look California?
The plan would create new states with names like Jefferson, Silicon Valley and South California.
The main backer is tech industry investor Timothy Draper, who plans to hold a news conference later today to officially announce that his group has enough petition signatures to move the plan forward.
The constitutional amendment would need more than 807,000 valid signatures to qualify, SFGate reports.Draper is believed to have 1.3 million signatures. The population of California is 37 million.
If the Six Californias petition is verified, the ballot proposal wouldn't come up for a vote until 2016; to be enacted, the plan would require approval from the California Legislature, and the U.S. Congress.
The Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who backed Hotmail and Skype in the early days of the internet, believes government in California is so broken down that the only way to fix it is to break it up .
Draper has said he wants to create areas that are governable — something he says California is not as it is currently constituted.
"We pay the most for education and we're 46th," Draper told Marketplace earlier this year. "We pay among the most for prisons, and we are among the highest recidivism rate. So we have a failed state."
A commentary on the site of nonprofit Los Angeles TV station KCET's says the six-state plan will never become reality.
Writer Chris Clarke says, ""The task of dismantling the state's regulatory infrastructure would be mind-boggling. Take for instance an issue on everyone's mind right now, that of water. Splitting the state would put the water supply for the state's largest urban area in question, as well as for much of the rest of the state."
Long before Draper unveiled his plan, Clarke notes, many similar movements had already failed in California.
Steve Maviglio, a political consultant and former gubernatorial spokesman has set up an opposition group called One California. He tweeted: “Apparently Tim Draper forgot one state in his Six Californias scheme: the state of confusion.”
Los Angeles Times cartoonist David Horsey, who suggested more lively names for the mini-states”like Weed (the marijuana-growing north), Merlot (the wine-growing regions in and around Napa), iState (Silicon Valley) and Bling (Hollywood and environs).