There’s an effort to split California into three new states that’s gaining steam — and it may be heading to the ballot box in the 2018 midterm election.
It’s a question that could forever reshape America, and it’s already well on it’s way to the voting booth.
Tech billionaire and bitcoin enthusiast Timothy Draper wants to carve California into three separate states. This week, his initiative cleared the first legal hurdle needed to divide up the Golden State permanently.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced Thursday that Draper is allowed to take the next step and circulate a petition among California residents. If he’s able to obtain 365,880 signatures from registered voters within the next 180 days, the state of California will officially vote to split apart after the 2018 election.
The new states would be divided by geographic area, according to the proposed measure. Northern California would encompass everything from Oregon to San Francisco county. Southern California would begin south of San Francisco in Fresno and cover nearly everything to Mexico. New California would be Los Angeles and much of the central and southern coast.
Should the measure gains enough signatures and voters choose to divide up the Golden State, California state’s assets and debts would be divided evenly among the three new entities.
According to a local Bay Area NBC News affiliate in California, the state would be divided accordingly:
CALIFORNIA: Los Angeles, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: Fresno, Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mono, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Tulare
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Contra Costa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Marin, Mariposa, Mendocino, Merced, Modoc, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Joaqui, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne, Yolo, Yuba.
The idea of the vote making it to the ballot isn’t too far fetched, either. After all, Californians once voted to allow a police officer in San Francisco walk his beat with his ventriloquist dummy. They tried to ban hippies from sitting on sidewalks (but failed).
California even voted once to ban the sale of horse meat to Europe on a statewide ballot.
Is it so much of a stretch to think that a billionaire could find over 365,000 people who want to divide the state into three?
If the initiative passes, it would mean the new state(s) map would look like the following:
Bitcoin billionaire investor wants to split California into 3 different states. Here's what it would look like: https://t.co/KHpeJKQdia pic.twitter.com/yMm8eUaHEc
— Riya (@loislane28) October 27, 2017
What do you think of the idea?
Keep California as-is? Or split it apart?
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Should California be split into three new states?
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