I was looking at an election projection—how about saying that 10 times really fast?—map prepared by Congressional Quarterly at its web site for the 2006 elections, and they had all sorts of facts and figures, as you might imagine.

And then I was struck by the population counts of the states. I was rather surprised to find, for instance, that Louisiana, home of New Orleans, had something like only 4.5 million people (all population counts here are 2005 counts). I thought that it should be double that. I knew that California had something like 35 million—CQ actually gave 36.4 million!—and so I was a bit shocked to believe that California dwarfed Louisiana to such a degree.

Then I checked out other states, ones I knew to be both very populated, and then those others only populated by corn and wheat and not people.

New York—yeah! there's a favorite: 19.3 million. Illinois, because of Chicago: 12.7 million. Florida, practically a retirement home for Americans looking for a semi-tropical sunset of their years: 17.8 million. Texas...of course, everything is big about Texas, as they'll tell ya: 22.9 million! Yeah, now I'm talkin'! Those are the very decently populated.

North Dakota—I mean no one lives a barren environment, right? 637 thousand. Wyoming? Yeah, the buffalo of Yellowstone pretty much outnumber just about anything there, although I am sure the politicians try to work them into the census, eh? 509 thousand. Woo hoo! I'll bet the North Dakotans are pissed, huh?

But California is the king. It's nearly twice the population of the state that comes in 2nd. It's population density is really unimaginable.

The absence of parity among states means that California is not adequately represented at the federal level of government. This is no more apparent than the fact that the United States Senate has only two representatives from each state. So while Wyoming has 225,000 people per senator, California has 18,000,000 per senator. That is, if one citizen phoned in Wyoming phoned his or her senator, 36 citizens in California would phone their senator assuming the same ratio of calls.

A Settled Question

There has been talk in the past about splitting up California. And the pro and con groups have put forth their arguments. The list below lines up the pro and con issues of dividing California.

The question is not really whether if California should be divided, but rather how it should be divided. How as in How many parts? and How shall the lines forming the parts be drawn?

I will not bother to debate the question of if California should be divided. There have been efforts to divide California even before it became a state (see citations below). In 1864, the state's voters approved of a plebescite to split the state and the governor sent request to the U.S. Congress, but it did not approve of the action (they were mired in the civil war at the time) [see Pryor]. In my opinion, this is a settled question. Too many Californians are for it, and it does not really matter whether non-Californians are for it (isn't self-determination a cornerstone of democracy?). Yes, there are likely to be winners and losers if such an action is taken—as there seems to be whenever an action of any kind is taken. Americans outside of California would probably like to see this economic gargantuan taken down a few levels, and then there are those who don't want to have to deal with new state laws coming out of two new states, so they would oppose division.

But the time has come for really cutting up the state. Deal with it. Embrace it. Accept it. Run with it.

Life is about change. Government is about change. History is about change.

A Three-, Not Two-, State Solution

Now we get to the question of how?.

First of all, if you're going to do it right, then doing it right brings in a few factors that must be considered. The future is one of those factors.

The future suggests that California is going to continue to grow in people counts, and so will the states that result from a fission. This would mean that the state might benefit from being divided to a level in anticipation that its numbers will continue to rise. However, one cannot really divide a state into as many ways as one wants. There are costs involved with creations of new state governments, including at the federal level.

I personally think that when one considers the average population of the third most populous states, say around 10-15 million, a split into three states of nearly even population would be useful. Each state would be left with 12 million.

How To Really Divide The State Into Three

While dividing the state into three new states of equal (or nearly so) population, there is a problem about what will result. Certainly the three new states will not be of equal size, since the population is not evenly distributed. The northern fourth of the state is very sparsely populated. The major metropolitan areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles probably take up two-thirds of the population. Perhaps a high priority should not really be given to division with rough parity in population, although it should certainly be a factor.

The other consideration is to divide the state by natural geographic contours. In a two-state solution with a northern and southern part, most people find it sensible to draw the border along the Tehachapi Mountains. The mountain range forms the northern border for the Los Angeles basin, and would divide the population in half roughly.

In a three-state solution, it would be more sensible to divide the state such that San Diego formed the major population center of a southern portion, Los Angeles formed the major population center of a central portion, and San Francisco formed the major population center of a northern portion. How to achieve this reasonable division is a matter for those practiced in the art of gerrymandering.

Most solutions for division have the borders being drawn in an east-west axis, which makes sense given California's present long north-south axis. However, some have considered a border forming along the north-south axis, perhaps to reflect a different in political views by those who live in the Sierra Nevadas and those who live in the lowlands and valleys. This is entirely impractical however.

A More Serious Look At The Geographic Considerations

The politics of water and other natural resources will come into play in a final settlement regarding the division of California. The state which gets San Diego will have the Colorado River and Imperial Valley, so it should be well off agriculturally, one might think.

The people of Los Angeles live in fear of not having water and agricultural resources, so perhaps they should get access to the San Joaquin River and its valley. A line that runs through or just above Fresno would be sensible. Having been born in Fresno, the city has a special place in my own considerations. I think if the people of Fresno wanted the new state containing San Francisco or Los Angeles, they should be given that choice. Thus two proposed borders would be drawn for the states that divide the new ones containing LA and SF, and the voters of Fresno would get a choice where they want to go.

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Eventually the people of California will arrive at a compromise. All of the new states would have equal opportunities for tourism and the development of tourist sites. Priorities will change regarding devleopment and to what extent development would take place. The people of LA will not be dictating to the people of Lassen what to do any longer.

Once the people of California have a plan they can proudly present, it's up to the Congress to waste no time in approving of the plan. Failure to act on the plan may very well result in civil unrest or unilateral actions including secession.

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Here is some reading found online through a Google search that treats the subject of dividing California. It is clear that countless others have given serious consideration to doing this. Separatism and California: How Many States Should California Be? This short essay was prepared and made available by a married couple on their web site. It does not even argue about if California should be divided. What's available shows a real scholarly effort. Unfortunately the promised 150-170 web pages do not appear to be posted. Ellison, William Henry, "THE MOVEMENT FOR STATE DIVISION IN CALIFORNIA, 1849-1860", Vol. 17, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 101 - 139. Now this is a very scholarly article with 149 footnotes (awesome!), and it only describes the attempts to mangle California in the first 11 years of its existence! Compromise of 1850 This Wikipedia article goes into a well-known event of United States history to report the discussion about dividing California even before it was born! Of course, slavery was constitutional at that time but so was the abolition movement. Both the pro- and anti-slavery factions did not want new states emerging which favored one side or the other. Fixing California's Problems This is actually a (we)blog site that goes by the name Dvorak Uncensored, run by John Dvorak. He actually has a thoughtful entry on splitting up California and even has a crude drawing of how to carve, with names for the new states. The cool thing about this is (assuming the link is still good) is that you can read the reactions of others to his proposal, with some 100+ comments posted at the time the page was viewed. Efforts to Split California This article by Alton Pryor writing for Ezine@rticles (Nov. 2005) reports that at least 26 attempts have been made to divide California!

Mavi Gözler
California Native

20 September 2006