How many states should there be in California?
I first heard about it on the American programme “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah”; now it’s been picked up by the British media including this item on the BBC website. It’s a proposal to divided the current US state of California into three and the proposition will appear on the ballot paper in November.
The current state of California – the largest by population in the United States with some 40 million people – would be divided into: Northern California, roughly comprising the northern half of the state, including San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Sacramento; Southern California, stretching from Fresno to the US-Mexico border; and California, comprising six coastal counties between Los Angeles and Monterey.
I had not realised that it was constitutionally possible to divide a state. If approved, the partition of California would mark the first division of a US state since the pro-union West Virginia broke from secessionist Virginia in 1863 during the US civil war.
Will the proposition be approved? An April poll by SurveyUSA found support for the measure among registered voters was just 17%. But this is the age of Trump and Brexit …