Mendocino County has received 2,235 petition signatures in favor of splitting up California into six different states, according to Mendocino County Clerk and Recorder Susan Ranochak.
Timothy Draper, a Menlo Park venture capitalist, has been advocating dividing the state up and has allegedly obtained 1.3 million signatures statewide, which is more than the 807,615 needed at the state level, Draper said at a press conference outside the County of Sacramento Voter Registration and Elections Department on July 16.
Draper said on his website that the state of California is too large, and dividing it would create governments closer to the people. “We received our petition signatures on July 18, and have 30 days to respond,” Ranochak said. “We have to check the signatures for accuracy which is done on a random sample of 500, and then we ship them back to the Secretary of State.”
Ranochak said the 2,235 received for Mendocino County, “isn”t a whole lot.”
“If there was enough signatures for it to qualify, it would be on for Nov. 2015 at the earliest,” Ranochak said.
According to the Six California”s website, Mendocino County would fall under the new “Jefferson State” consisting of some 949,000 people.
Most county administrators aren”t convinced that enough questions have been answered yet regarding the proposal.
“Any change like this would definitely affect the county,” said Shari Schapmire, Mendocino County treasurer and tax collector. “This county gets a lot of state and federal funds. There would have to be some changes in funding if the state was divided up.”
