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Comment by SubiculumCode | Hacker News Reader

California needs to separate into more States, or people should move to help turn Red States purple.

Edit: Since HN is rate-limiting me. There have been proposals that try to either give a Red State advantage, in particular, the electoral college. However, California could reasonably be split into 7 states (2 Red, 5 Blue) that would still have greater populations than Utah, netting +3 sets of Senators.

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Is there any movement trying to achieve this other than the "State of Jefferson"[0] which would create the reddest of all Red States?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...

Jefferson would mostly be blue. The emerald triangle is left/libertarian and a lot of boomers there have no access to Fox News and are still salty about the time Regan landed a helicopter on their ranch to shoot up their weed crop. Jefferson only sounds red because only crazy right wingers with hybrid Confederate/Jamaican flags on their trucks support the idea. The reality is they would still need to live and vote with their neighbors who drive Subarus.

I don't know how true that is. It's hard to say which counties "would be" in that state since it will never exist, and some of the counties which its supporters say would be included have already affirmatively rejected the idea, such as Lake County. But as for the supposed California counties, the Trumpy ones like Shasta went 2:1 for Trump in 2020 while the large "blue" ones like Butte went 50/50. The ludicrously empty ones like Modoc were 3:1 Trump in 2020.

Jefferson will never ever happen because there's no mechanism for it to happen, and because it would be by far the poorest state with the absolute worst economy in the nation, so I'm not even sure why we should discuss it.

Oh and by the way the Jefferson plan specifically excludes the Emerald Triangle.

I'm not necessarily opposed to splitting California into multiple states, but if we do that then we should also split Texas, Florida, and New York because they have comparable population sizes. In order to split a state, both the state's Legislature and Congress (both House and Senate) would have to vote in favor. So it's possible, but politically difficult to get all three of those bodies to agree.

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-4/#ar...

All the plans I've seen to separate California, would create more red states..

The 'Six Californias'[0] proposal would be a net-positive for Democrats.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias

Texas can separate into 5 states according to its state constitution.

LBJ frequently brought that up in negotiations. It was his prerogative so to speak.

I think secession is more likely, but we aren't there yet.

Secession is unconstitutional. Splitting up an existing state is consitutional.

This is always such a non-sense argument. The civil war showed that you can't secede and lose the battle. Do you think the Federal government would start a bombing campaign against the People's Republic of California? No. Would there be some really uncomfortable trade negotiations? Yes.

Texas v. White established that states cannot unilaterally leave.

Would the federal government carpet bomb a state that tried? No. But there are other means to exert force and stop secession. Besides, the U.S. Government has no reason to ever willingly let California (or Texas, or really any state) leave the union, so why would they ever sit down at the negotiating table?

Then they would be at a stalemate/armistice much like the Koreas. How would the Feds trade with PRC? They'd have to either allow it full market access as a wayward child, which would mean PRC would get all the benefits of trade without having to pay Federal tax, or they would have to freeze out PRC, which would damage the Federal economy. Given California's economic pull around the world, I could see a great number of countries in the West aligning with them for "freedom reasons".

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