Citizens in Charge

It seems for now, California will have to stay as a singular state.

Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s multi-million dollar “Six Californias” initiative failed to gather enough valid signatures, according to the California Secretary of State. The initiative would have begun the process to create six separate states out of California, giving 38 million Californians new, smaller state governments and economies.

Draper contests the findings of the Secretary of State, however. 

“Six Californias collected more than enough signatures to place the initiative on the November 2016 ballot and we are confident that a full check of the signatures would confirm that fact,” said Draper in a statement.

The “Six Californias” nonprofit group, which led the initiative campaign, reportedly turned in 1.3 million signatures, well above the 808,000 required for a place on the ballot. However, when a random sampling of the signatures were scrutinized for validity, only 66% of the signatures were qualified as valid. That means a total of 752,685 valid signatures, about 56,000 short of the required number.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/09/12/six-californias-fails-ballot/15534081/