(Image source from: Visit The USA)
California residents for the November General elections will get an opportunity to ballot on a measure to divide the Golden State into three separate states.
More than 42,468 valid signatures were submitted as of Tuesday, by the proponents of the CAL 3 initiative, making it eligible for the Nov 6 general election ballot, according to the California Secretary of State's office.
Though the office did not mention total submitted signatures exactly, merely backers said the petition drew more than 600,000 across the state's 58 countries from residents, dwarfing the 365,000 signatures required to qualify for the ballot.
The initial step would be adding the initiative to the ballot in a process that would ultimately require approval from Congress.
The country's largest state would split into three new states of a near-equal population: North California, California and Southern California, according to the proposal led by venture capitalist Tim Draper.
The Bay Area and the Oregon border would be included in Northern California. Southern California would begin in Fresno and cover most of the southern state whereas the new California would cover Los Angeles County and much of the coast below San Francisco Bay.
The initiative will be certified by California Secretary of State Alex Padilla as qualified for the November ballot on June 28, his office said Tuesday.
The similar measures were proposed by Draper in 2012 and 2014, but those endeavors failed after election officials invalidated many of the signatures collected.
"The unanimous support for CAL 3 from all 58 of California's counties to reach this unprecedented milestone in the legislative process is the signal that across California, we are united behind CAL 3 to create a brighter future for everyone," Draper said in a statement in April after the signatures were collected.
Draper says that the split would create three separate regimes, boost education and infrastructure, and lower taxes, though critics claim it could do more harm than good.
"It's not like you're starting from scratch, you have to blow up everything," Steven Maviglio, who helped defeat Draper's previous effort, told local reporters earlier this year. "There are so many fundamentally flawed aspects to this."
By Sowmya Sangam
