Plan to split California into three states earns spot on November ballot
latimes.com
latimes.com
But this is at the cost of probable administrative efficiency to redundancy and loss of their large size leverage. The sponsors are naked about their bad intentions however - wanting to disrupt bargaining power for sheer selfish reasons. Preventing Medicare bargaining was bad for everyone except special interests.
But then, I'd also like to see legislatures appointing electors to the Electoral College …
This sounds good in theory, but the reason they passed the 17A in the first place was because of widespread corruption in the Senate.
>But then, I'd also like to see legislatures appointing electors to the Electoral College …
That's not going to fix anything either. What they need to do is replace the Constitution and adopt a Westminster parliament like every other decent democratic republic out there. How many countries have a presidential system like ours? Only a few, and they're ones like El Salvador, not exactly countries you want to emulate.
The interests of a state based on popular sovereignty are, by definition, exactly the aggregate of the interests of its people. Appointment by state legislatures rather than direct election by state citizens was done because of many of the founders distrust for democracy and desire to build layers of insulation between the immediate popular will and policy decisions, but that's orthogonal to the reason for equal apportionment rather than population-wide apportionment, which was (like many features of the original Constitution that produce unequal representation of voting citizens) largely motivated by the desire to protect the institution of slavery by increasing the relative voting power—both in the Senate and in the Electoral College which was then tied to combined Congressional representation—of the slave state.
Democrats have had enough of gerrymandering, and California is pretty blue these days. This won't pass.
I don't have an opinion on whether that's better or worse, but there are pros and cons. I doubt it will happen but it's a more plausible debate than succession at least.
Secession would be a cowardly abandonment of those who are treated poorly in other states.
New York City would be interesting because it seems like a split would really need to cross state lines which would make it really, really difficult.
"Florida has had a South Florida split talks in the past" - Municipal level
NY and CA are on a whole different level than anything else in recent history.
They would make the debate very strange, though. At least some of the agitation will sound literally foreign to our normal concerns.
http://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-political-geogra...
If all red states were to be winner-take-all in the electoral college, and all blue states were to split their electors according to vote percentages, that would not be more "representative".
Currently California is +2 Dems
In the new plan it would most likely be +2 Dems +2 Rep +2 Dems = +2 Dems
So no new gain. Where it would hurt would be the electorate college. California has 55, now 1/3rd of that would go to Rep.
Does anybody have a copy of the article?
Yay GDPR nonsense.
I always used to suggest they split it in two - at Monterey right down the middle, since both halves would want Monterey. There's a fault line splitting it already, so its a natural division as well!
We split at Bakersfield as is custom, and the South gets to keep it.
;)
"Dude, this is totally lame."
Honestly, I don't think the state will ever split, but if it does a simple split like the 3 Californias proposal would make the most sense.
The dividing line is the 55 freeway - everything south of the 55 is 'behind the orange curtain' everything north is part of LA, culturally.
Note that “us” in this case refers to different states: the state containing SF will get better infrastructure and education (because of both priorities and money, and, in the case of education, even if it maintains statewide equal per-pupil funding, it won't be equalized with as many poorer regions.)
The bright red state that doesn't have SF or LA in it will get lower taxes, at least in the near term, but not better infrastructure or education (safety net programs with federal, state economy driven funding, will get bigger subsidies, though.)
The one with LA will probably see the least political change, because LA already dominates the unified state.
That would place San Francisco, Sacramento, Monterey and Fresno in Northern California, and Los Angeles, San Diego, and Bakersfield in Southern California.
If they were just talking about splitting in to two states - Northern California, and Southern California it might be more viable, as there are distinct cultural lines in the state to be drawn - but three states makes no sense to me, especially with the boundaries drawn as they are.
I’m pretty sure the answer to that rhetorical question is, because that success and prosperity has happened under liberal policies.
This would add a net of four more Senators, which only might go Republican. Considering that California is generally considered solidly blue as it stands, this would almost certainly result in the balance shifting toward the Democrats in the Senate.
My point is that the way the state is divided in this proposal all but guarantees that all three will be blue.
Right now the electoral college votes in CA are basically guaranteed Democrat votes.
This would break that, affording at least 1/3rd of them to Republicans.
That's huge, and would likely ensure a Republican president for decades.
I’m all for states to split if it makes sense. Texas, New York (upstate vs downstate), and of course California. The needs are too disparate and varied and could be better served by more attuned regional governments.
I know I’ll seriously consider voting for the split. The politics are way too dysfunctional at the state level.
As a New Yorker I'd be all for trading upstate NYC for part of north Jersey.
DC and northern Virginia should merge into a single state, but also include all of central Maryland (including Baltimore). Western MD should go to WV and eastern shore MD should combine with eastern shore VA and merge with Delaware.
New Jersey should be completely eliminated. Northern NJ should merge with NYC and other parts of its metro area and form a new state. Southern NJ should merge with Philly and form a new state.
CT (the part not taken by NYC), RI, and MA should merge. VT, NH, and Maine should merge. Wyoming should be broken apart and merged with the surrounding states.
CA should break apart, but should merge with the surrounding states: the southern part should merge with Las Vegas, for instance. The far northern part should merge with Oregon.
Here's an idea from the 70s about how to redraw the state boundaries: http://mentalfloss.com/article/57444/map-only-38-states
The splitting and merging in some cases would make sense, but would only be successful if done organically via grass roots.
I agree completely. But it's costing us dearly. Just look at how bad public transit is in the DC area with the Metro system: this is caused by it being under the control of 3 states (counting DC as a state here). Having metro areas split over state boundaries causes massive problems like this, increases costs enormously, and makes the country uncompetitive. Eventually it's going to result in America not being the strongest economy in the world, and maybe even a not-so-important has-been like Britain. The politics in this country are fundamentally broken, and the long-term results of this are not going to be good.
As I said, I give you the benefit of the doubt, because you don't post that way, and I don't think you meant to here. It's just an unfortunate phrasing, but I thought I'd mention it.
As to the substance of your statement: Yes, this fits the pattern. But I don't think they care whether they split California or not. Splitting it doesn't change things very much. (Unlike, say, presidential elections. And on that topic, it occurs to me that we got handed an absolutely horrible choice in 2016. Maybe we ought to be looking more closely for interference in the primaries, not just in the general election.)
I think the real goal is to create conflict. This is a nice topic to get everybody all wound up about. I think they'll try to amplify that. Whether or not they're behind the proposal, they'll try to rile up both sides.
One of the things to watch for is the reasons that are presented for people to become agitated. Since agitprop is not "organic" (for want of a better word), the reasons given for becoming outraged seem a bit... off. Foreign, even. You think, "everyone's freaking out about this, but it doesn't quite resonate with me". That's a hint that it may be manufactured outrage, rather than real.
What's the right phrasing? The way you phrased it fit a pattern in my mind. That's not much of a concern if other people don't share that pattern. (Judging by the downvotes, not many do.) To placate me, you might say "just search, and pick a source that you consider reliable" - that eliminates the possibility of some fringe view whose only sources are fringe. But that's me - that works for a sample of one; any further applicability is uncertain.
> Or do I need to source everything?
That might be the answer. Posts are read more than they are written. If you google it, you save 10 or 1000 readers from having to google it. (Of course, if some of your readers consider BBC to be "fringe" or "part of the deep state" or whatever, the link you choose from the search may not satisfy them...)