For all of the reasons given, secession from the United States is a bad idea. But I’m going to keep banging this drum: The metropolises need to secede from their states, while staying part of the United States. Heck, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 40 of the states. It’s about time that they got fair representation.
That’s an approach I’d never considered - is there wiggle-room in the state constitutions to split into smaller states?
Article IV Section 3 of the US constitution
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
If a state agrees, a new state can be formed in its territory, effectively splitting it.
And there is the rub. Conservative legislators won’t allow it in most states, because it would mean more Dems in congress.
Same in California for much the same reason. There has long been a Republican proposal to split it into 5 states so there are more Republican senators.
I think it’s probably neither allowed nor disallowed in state constitutions, but I’m just a dilettante constitutional scholar. Whether it’s allowed or not under the current system, that system is broken and can’t be fixed within the limitations of the system, and it needs a disruption. Disruptions tend to be unpleasant, so this is the least-disruptive disruption that I’ve come up with. There’s even historical precedent for it, in the form of the free imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire.
