This idea about splitting California up into three states just won’t go away. Excerpt:
In a midterm season marked by primary upsets and the prospect of Democrats claiming a congressional check on President Trump’s power, another sensational development has been the momentum behind a ballot measure to split up the unwieldy, high-tax state of California.
The California secretary of state last month verified almost a half-million signatures collected by Cal3 initiative backer Tim Draper, qualifying it for the November ballot.
But could the seemingly quixotic bid to split California into three separate states become reality?
Californians shouldn’t worry about getting their driver’s licenses redone quite yet – the initiative has plenty of hurdles to surmount, even if it beats the odds and is approved by voters in November.
“There are a lot of what-ifs,” Citizens for Cal3 spokeswoman Peggy Grande acknowledged.
Yeah, there’s one major what-if, Ms. Grande: Congress.
The U.S. Constitution, Article Four, Section 3, Clause 1, states “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.“
Now let’s break that down, because there area couple of hurdles this movement would have to overcome. Here’s a big one: “New states may be admitted by Congress… but no new states shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned…”
Will the California Legislature approve this breakup? I’m inclined to believe they won’t. Both gubernatorial candidates are against it. The ballot initiative involved here is, frankly, not worth the pixels it’s printed on.
But even more so. that clause concludes with “…as well as of the Congress.“
Congress won’t approve this. Not a Republican Congress, not a Democrat Congress, not any Congress. The GOP doesn’t want four more likely Democrat seats in the Senate and four more Electoral College votes; the Democrats don’t want to take a chance on the Central Valley overcoming San Diego and turning one of those three states red.
The California Legislature won’t approve this. Legislators from the northern counties and the Central Valley, tired as they are of being ruled by the wealthy coastal elites in LA and the Bay Area, aren’t going to go along with a scheme that carves the state up to try to maintain that control.
This is a bad idea; fortunately it’s a bad idea that’s not going anywhere.
