For now, California will remain one state, as the California Supreme Court voted unanimously to remove Proposition 9, the three-state-initiative (CAL 3) from November’s ballot. Supporters of the initiative will have to wait, while the court considers whether voters are even allowed to consider splitting the state into three separate states. The court will next study the legality of the proposition and decide if the California Constitution allows such a measure.
The court normally allows ballot initiatives to go forward without intervention, but in this case, it cited “significant questions regarding the proposition’s validity.” The court further decided that answering those questions “outweighs any potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election.”
The “significant questions” under consideration include whether voters have the authority to break up the state under California’s ballot proposition system. That system allows voters to directly vote on laws, a form of “direct democracy.” Also under consideration is the idea that CAL 3 would amount to a “revision” of California’s state constitution, something which the ballot proposition system does not allow for.
“We believe it is clear that a ballot initiative may not revise the Constitution by making changes in the basic framework of government,” said Carlyle Hall, the attorney for the Planning and Conservation League, which sued to take Proposition 9 off the ballot. “And there can be no greater change in our framework of government than the total abolition of our existing Constitution.”
Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League Howard Penn believes that, if passed, Proposition 9 would cause “chaos in our public services including safeguarding our environment … all to satisfy the whims of one billionaire.”
That billionaire is venture capitalist Tim Draper, who drafted and personally financed the petition to place CAL 3 on the ballot. The petition received more than 600,000 signatures, almost double the amount needed.
“Apparently, the insiders are in cahoots and the establishment doesn’t want to find out how many people don’t like the way California is being governed,” Draper said in a statement following the court’s order. He added, “The whole point of the [state’s] initiative process was to be set up as a protection from a government that was no longer representing its people. Now that protection has been corrupted.”
Draper, who failed in a 2014 effort to divide the Golden State into six different states, proposed the initiative in order to empower regional communities to address problems such as failing school systems, deteriorating infrastructure, and high taxes. Draper believes in its current form, California has become ungovernable and that a restructuring is in order.
“To create three states from a standing start, you’ll get all the benefits of knowing all the things that worked in the past, and all the things that could work in the future and you get to eliminate all the baggage you got in the state,” Draper explained in May. “When you get together and you start something fresh, you have a new way to look at it and create better things.”
Opponents of CAL 3 believe that a balkanization of California would only multiply the leftist hysteria coming from the Pacific Coast. The two extra states as proposed would almost certainly elect four more Democratic senators, which would shift the already precarious balance of the U.S. Senate firmly into Democrat hands. The split would, maybe — and that’s a big maybe — put a third of California’s electoral college votes “in play” for the GOP, but that seems like a poor tradeoff for the near certainty of those four additional Senate seats.
As proposed, the plan would create three states out of the current California: Northern California, which would include San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and the current state capital Sacramento; Southern California, which would include Anaheim, Bakersfield, Fresno, and San Diego; and a new version of California, which would include Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oxnard, and Santa Clarita. So, all three proposed states would be dominated by extremely liberal urban areas.
CAL 3 is not the only plan to divide California. There is a movement in the 23 northernmost counties of the state to break off as well. The State of Jefferson movement believes that the rest of the state has gone so far left that the people of those counties no longer have any say in the state. Their Declaration of Independence states, “We declare the State of California is in open rebellion and insurrection against the government of the United States.” The group primarily cites Governor Jerry Brown’s refusal to honor federal immigration law and the state’s so-called sanctuary state status as their main reasons for wishing to leave the state.
For now, the attempt to balkanize California has been tabled, so that judges and lawyers can study the issue. But California, as it is currently structured, has incredible problems. Some sort of major change in the state may be inevitable as it descends further and further into the dystopian nightmare that leftists have created.
Image: screenshot from cal3.com
