Are You Ready for Six Californias? Plan to Split State Gains Momentum

Reports
Reuters:

A long-shot effort to break California into six separate states
got a boost on Monday, when the billionaire venture capitalist
behind the proposal said he had gathered enough signatures to place
it on the ballot in two years.

Timothy Draper, a founder of a Silicon Valley-based venture
capital firm that has invested in Twitter, Skype and Tesla, among
other companies, has been agitating for months for a ballot
initiative to chop the most populous U.S. state into smaller
entities.

“It’s important because it will help us create a more
responsive, more innovative and more local government, and that
ultimately will end up being better for all of Californians,” said
Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the campaign. “The idea … is to
create six states with responsive local governments – states that
are more representative and accountable to their constituents.”

Salazar
tells Reuters that his group has over 800,000 signatures for the
initiative and will be filing them today so the plan comes up for a
vote in 2016.

Some details:

One state, to be called Silicon Valley, would include the tech
hub along with the San Francisco Bay Area. Jefferson, named after
the third U.S. president, would encompass the northernmost region.
The state capital of Sacramento would be in North California, while
South California would be made up of San Diego and the eastern
suburbs of Los Angeles.

L.A. itself would be part of a state called West California.

Read more.

Reason TV’s Alex Manning recently reported on ongoing attempts
to split part of the Golden State into the State of Jefferson.
Watch here and click
for full text, resources, and more.