Reimagining Federalism
I've long toyed with the notion of California seceding from the Union. Don't get me wrong, I really really love my country. But California is far and away its best part.
A friend recently groused to me how unfair it was under the federal system that the state of California had more people than the smallest 22 states combined. Any Californian can list the litany of woes this situation creates (from the electoral college to the Senate to the net transfer of billions of dollars annually out-of-state).
But it occurred to me today, why secession? Why not dissolution? In fact, I liked this idea so much that I've spent some time redrawing the state of California as several smaller states each of which had to be larger than Wyoming, and preferably would be larger than Vermont.
I was able to break the state into 23 new states, ranging in size from 9.8 million (the state of Los Angeles, which would be the 8th largest state in the new Union (between Michigan and Georgia)) all the way down to 609,313 (the state of Monterey/San Benito/Kings, which would be in between Vermont and DC and still larger than Wyoming, the smallest state). This would have the fortunate effect of giving California 46 Senators, and would allow California to more accurately represent the diversity of political opinions held throughout the state.
Here is a list of your new Union, with California broken up into reasonable sizes:
| STATE | POPULATION |
| Texas | 22,118,509 |
| New York | 19,190,115 |
| Florida | 17,019,068 |
| Illinois | 12,653,544 |
| Pennsylvania | 12,365,455 |
| Ohio | 11,435,798 |
| Michigan | 10,079,985 |
| Los Angeles | 9,871,506 |
| Georgia | 8,684,715 |
| New Jersey | 8,638,396 |
| North Carolina | 8,407,248 |
| Virginia | 7,386,330 |
| Massachusetts | 6,433,422 |
| Indiana | 6,195,643 |
| Washington | 6,131,445 |
| Tennessee | 5,841,748 |
| Missouri | 5,704,484 |
| Arizona | 5,580,811 |
| Maryland | 5,508,909 |
| Wisconsin | 5,472,299 |
| Minnesota | 5,059,375 |
| Colorado | 4,550,688 |
| Alabama | 4,500,752 |
| Louisiana | 4,496,334 |
| South Carolina | 4,147,152 |
| Kentucky | 4,117,827 |
| Oregon | 3,559,596 |
| Oklahoma | 3,511,532 |
| Connecticut | 3,483,372 |
| Orange | 2,957,766 |
| Iowa | 2,944,062 |
| San Diego | 2,930,886 |
| Mississippi | 2,881,281 |
| Arkansas | 2,725,714 |
| Kansas | 2,723,507 |
| Utah | 2,351,467 |
| Nevada | 2,241,154 |
| Riverside/Imperial | 1,931,882 |
| New Mexico | 1,874,614 |
| San Bernadino | 1,859,678 |
| West Virginia | 1,810,354 |
| Nebraska | 1,739,291 |
| Santa Clara | 1,678,421 |
| Alameda | 1,461,030 |
| Idaho | 1,366,332 |
| Sacramento | 1,330,711 |
| Maine | 1,305,728 |
| New Hampshire | 1,287,687 |
| Hawaii | 1,257,608 |
| Rhode Island | 1,076,164 |
| Contra Costa | 1,001,136 |
| Santa Cruz/San Mateo | 949,040 |
| Solano/Napa/Yolo/Mendocino/Lake/Glenn/Colusa | 925,646 |
| Montana | 917,621 |
| Fresno | 830,325 |
| Delaware | 817,491 |
| Ventura | 791,130 |
| South Dakota | 764,309 |
| San Francisco | 751,682 |
| Merced/Stanislaus | 723,807 |
| Plumas/Lassen/Modoc-
Siskiyou/Shasta/Butte- Tehama/Trinity/Del Norte- Humboldt | 723,663 |
| San Joaquin/Calaveras/Amador | 714,566 |
| Kern | 713,087 |
| Marin/Sonoma | 712,798 |
| El Dorado/Yuba/Sutter/Placer/Nevada/Sierra | 708,793 |
| San Luis Obispo/Santa Barbara | 656,252 |
| Alaska | 648,818 |
| North Dakota | 633,837 |
| Tulare/Inyo/Mon/Alpine/Madera/Mariposa/Tuolumne | 631,335 |
| Vermont | 619,107 |
| Monterey/San Benito/Kings | 609,313 |
| District of Columbia | 563,384 |
| Wyoming | 501,242 |
Here is a map with the names of the counties outlined.
12 Comments:
Fascinating!
This would swing CA's influence to the political right.
Think of the Mann Act implications, though - the entire film industry would grind to a halt!
I definitely agree with the comments over at the Fray -- you seriously need to look up the blue/red county data, and see how this actually affects the balance of power. I think because the densest counties -- the ones that form small-acreage segments (esp in the Bay Area) -- swing liberal, that we overall would come out slightly leftwards. But I'm not sure.
In any case, I find it totally absurd that a Wyoman's vote counts 70 times more than mine in confirming a Supreme Court Justice or ratifying a treaty. I'm in favor of anything that evens that out. I've seen a plan where things are set up so that the number of Senators is no longer fixed at two per state, and the total number of Senators is increased, so that the distortion between CA and WY is reduced to about 5, instead of 70 (and to almost 1:1 in the electoral college). You then have Senators elected on a rotating proportional representation system (in order for a party with a sitting Senator to win a contested seat, they have to win enough of the proportional vote to cover both the seat they already have, AND the new seat), and the House still elected from localized districts.
Oh, and while we're discussing changes to the system -- DC needs to either be given representation in the House and Senate, or needs to be exempted from all federal taxes. No taxation without representation, dammit!
Ta,
Auros
Quite an imaginative idea! I think it is fun to manipulate the system in this way. Mob-rule federalism!
Hey, I want to see this, if you can put it together:
Make a map of just the boundary of California, no county lines inside. Then take a same-scale map of the East Coast (with state borders included), flip it and put it over the California map so the coasts coincide.
I would like to see that!
I don't have an account but my name is Archer (http://patrickhenry.worldmagblog.com) and I was intrigued enough by this post to link to it.
First of all let's not discount the federal system and the effectiveness of the Connecticut Compromise. Representation for the larger states (California, my own NY) balances out pretty nicely in the House - although I'd like to see the numbers. If CA is getting shorted in the electoral college, how many Reps is it short?).
Second, this fantastic gerrymandering would indeed swing things to the right. Think of what would happen if applied across the country! Not that I would complain - as a Western New Yorker, I'm tired of being tossed around by the whims of a huge out-of-touch chunk of our population concentrated in tiny areas of the state.
That said, the idea is fascinating - but I think we're better off investigating the existing discrepancies and tweaking them.
Facinating...I hope this stays up a while as I sent out links.
An interesting thought. Logic, of course, impels me to add that it is not going to get done because there is no constitutional mechanism to pull it off. Now, if the constitution were to be so amended as to provide such a mechanism, why stop with California?
At the very least, the 10 largest "other" states will have equally compelling cases made to break them up. Before long, we will look very like the French system of "departements", and anything that makes us more like the French can't be good. That leads to unicameralism, months named things like thermidore and frigidaire, and nice, rational methods of execution like Dr. Guillotine's humane device.
The present situation has one good feature - it keeps California's wackiness pretty much contained within its borders. Those who like (or can tolerate) our idiosyncratic features can live here - others need not, and can choose (for example) Wyoming instead.
Another Anonymous viewer posted:
"An interesting thought. Logic, of course, impels me to add that it is not going to get done because there is no constitutional mechanism to pull it off"
There is, in fact, such a mechanism, in Article IV, Section 3. It requires an act of Congress and the legistature of the State(s) being divided or joined. AFAIK this is how West Virginia became a state.
Whether this violates the California Constitution...that's another matter.
Some posters have brought up the question of the constitutionality of splitting CA into separate states. For every state, except CA and TX, this would be an insurmountable problem. But, CA and TX entered the Union as republics, not as territories or as previously unincorporated possessions. CA and TX were countries that ceded sovereignty to join the Union. They were not annexed (i.e., HI), purchased (i.e., any Louisiana Purchase states, AK), or ceded as a result of conquest (Mexican War).
I remember reading an article about this with a "map" of the proposed split some years ago in The Atlantic or Harper's. Though I've searched for it on the Internet many times, I never found it again. Thank you Geoff, for bringing it up again.
As a Californian living in San Diego, I am always resentful that CT, which is only 40 square miles larger than my county gets two senators while I have to be represented by two liberal, married-rich, bay area women with whom I share not a shred of political belief or philosophy.
I bow to your superior knowledge of the Constitution: i.e., Article IV Section 3 (which I have consulted, and you are absolutely right).
Egad!
I still think it would be a bad idea - the Connecticut Compromise has (overall) served us well. It provides for a little healthy legislative gridlock now and then, and keeps the march of progress from proceeding rapidly over the nearest cliff (a frequent tendency in democratic societies demonstrated often by history).
Unicameralism was widely considered both good and inevitable in my long ago youth, and I am happy to say that, so far, conventional wisdom (on the inevitability of it, at least) has been frustrated. Conventional wisdom then also held that Government could be a powerful force for positive change, that inequality of outcomes was prima facie evidence of inequities in the process, and that these inequities could and should be "engineered" out. Progressiveism and the New Deal were very much on the march.
Over the succeeding years, the progressive platform has by and large NOT been implemented. The result has not been the economic and social cataclysm that the pundits preached would follow "inaction", but an unprecedented creation of wealth held more widely than any society in history has ever enjoyed, together with unchallenged international pre-eminence.
I believe quite strongly that the current situation, in which it is difficult to implement sweeping change in response to the politics of the moment, is a very good thing. I am still a believer in the Law of Unintended Effects: "the most profound and far-reaching consequence of any public policy, for good or ill, will be something that no one saw coming".
Our cranky and politically "inefficient" form of Federalism is a very good reason why the United States has enjoyed the stability, and thus the economic, political and social success that it has had thus far. It is very resistant to the attempts of any one party briefly in power to implement its scheme. With any degree of luck, no one will "improve" it.
I do believe that the "California Republic" was a brief rebellion (bear-flag rebellion, John Freemont, et al) unrelated to CA entering the Union.
I could be wrong, but I also believe CA entered the union with the rest of the conquest states in the "Mexican Cession" ending the "Mexican American War" (Alternately known as the "War of the American Invasion").
Texas was an independant republic for 9 years before they were annexed, and therefore does have the right to leave the union.
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