Plan to split California into 6 states advances

[Хahar 🤔]

These are spectacularly poor boundaries, of course; "North California" stands out in particular as not making any sense.

[Хahar 🤔]

How would these "states" have voted in 2008 and 2012 (vote totals)? Any data genesis want to take a crack at this?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/02/21/california-six-states-plan-tim-draper/5673283/

This link lists each state by current CA counties.

Jefferson: 48.94% R, 46.36% O
North California: 57.91% O, 39.04% R
Central California: 49.96% R, 47.38% O
Silicon Valley: 73.50% O, 23.47% R
West California: 66.95% O, 30.48% R
South California: 49.95% O, 47.55% R

[Хahar 🤔]

Of course, any plan endeavoring to split Northern California into multiple states would have to separate the northern coast from the Sacramento Valley. Not only are they very different culturally, but there are few road links between them.

[Хahar 🤔]

One more reason to hate Silicon Valley and the people who live there.

What reason is that?

[Хahar 🤔]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/15/six-californias-tim-draper/12661161/

this is a good link with the current population of each of the six 'states'

I would vote no, but I don't live in California and if all six states had a yes majority I would say that would be enough to approve it. It would have to be approved by all the US, but I say yes if the people of California(s) want.

But why not simply divide it into two states, north and south?

Because the key point of this plan is to deliver power to Silicon Valley, not to make any coherent sense.

On the radio this morning they had the proponent of this talking about how it would increase competition between states if you could travel 45 minutes and be in a different state. So basically the idea is to precipitate a race to the bottom.

[Хahar 🤔]

I wouldn't mind a clean, minimalist split of California North/South along that nice straight horizontal line north of Kern.  Probably not absolutely perfect from a CoI perspective (Kern, Inyo, and Mono are probably in the "wrong" state), but better than this mess.  And, besides, if you're gonna rejigger state lines to be perfect representations of organic communities rather than pretty boundaries than there's so many other places that need it more.

I've always been a proponent of the straight-line split. Kern County would definitely belong with the South; it's clearly oriented with Southern California in general and Los Angeles in particular. Inyo and Mono, being on the other side of the mountains, are more easily accessible from Southern California than Northern California, but that can be
sacrificed for the sake of reasonable boundaries.

Really, if you're going to split California, there are only two ways to do it:

1) A simple north-south split
2) A simple north-south split combined with a split of the north between the coast and inland

More than three states makes no sense whatsoever.

[Хahar 🤔]

6 seems ridiculous - why not just spit into Northern and Southern (not that would fly either).

Anyone how Northern and Southern differed in presidential voting?

Southern California is much more Republican than Northern California. A state just composed of the ten southern counties would have come close to voting for Bush in 2004; Kerry won 51.50% of the vote in those counties, while Bush won 47.22%.

[Хahar 🤔]

It's worth noting that nobody ever uses "Silicon Valley" as a geographical designation. The Santa Clara Valley is without exception referred to as the South Bay.

[Хahar 🤔]

At least it's less cringeworthy than the imitators who coin similar terms to describe invented regions that are used exclusively to market to tech companies (e.g. "Silicon Alley" in NYC, "Tech Valley" to describe eastern Upstate NY).

At least Silicon Alley is mildly clever. But yes, the idea a state that extends as far south as Monterrey could possibly be called "Silicon Valley" is silly. I'm not Californian but the idea of splitting LA from SoCal makes me cringe, it seems so illogical.

The most "sensible" split would be a NoCal/SoCal split along the 36th parallel.

Fortunately it's only Monterey. A state that extended to Monterrey would really be something.