(I’m pretty sure we’ve had questions almost precisely like this before but my ability to search the Neo-SDMB is not great and, this is timely I think because the necessary ‘aligning of the planets’ I mention has a decent chance of happening this November.)
Let’s say the California Legislature (though it could be any state) passed a law saying that, pending the approval of Congress and the President, California would divide itself to become five (or whatever) separate states.
Would it then only take a simple majority House vote, a simple majority Senate vote, and the signature of the president to go into effect? Is it just that easy?
If so, could wins by Biden and three Democratic Senate candidates lead to 54, 55, or 70 States and 108, 110, or 140 Senators?
Yes, any state can divide itself as long as Congress agrees. But they are extremely unlikely to agree. Other states don’t want to see their influence in the Senate reduced.
I have a relative who says that the senate will never vote for a 51st state because there’s not enough room in the chambers for a 51st senator. And expanding the chamber is either impossible or horribly expensive.
He’s usually looked into things before opining, so I’m kind of hoping it’s true.
And California will never agree on how many states to split into or where to draw the lines.
Of all the reasons I’ve heard for not expanding the Senate, that one has to be the most ridiculous. No, there is space behind the last rank for additional desks, and you could probably squeeze a couple in between ones in the front row also. (And if your relative thinks there are only 50 senators now, I wouldn’t trust their knowledge on anything.) And it’s not as if the desks are an integral part of the chamber. It should be possible to shift them without a huge expense.
What makes a shitload more sense to me is to revisit the Apportionment Act of 1911.
The Apportionment Act of 1911 is why there are 538 electoral votes, or, more specifically, why 438 of them are due to the composition of the House of Representatives.
Before the Act, the total number of Congresspersons kept jumping not only as new states came in but as the population grew. If the Great State of New York’s population went up, they got more representatives for the House, even if they didn’t grow in proportion to other states. Admittedly if they hadn’t put a cap on it, the House of Representatives would be huge and clumsy by now. But bear with me. Think strategically. Think short-term.
The Apportionment Act was an act of Congress. Not an amendment. It did not require that 2/3 of the states sign on. Changing it would not require an amendment. Just a bill passing each house of Congress.
The Interstate Compact that would theoreticallly cause 270+ electoral votes to be cast for the winner of the national popular vote has an uphill climb. Splitting California would create problems too (the state as a whole would lose a lot of clout). Admitting Puerto Rico and DC look easier but would only bring in a handful of additional likely-Dem electors to the electoral college.
But if both houses of Congress were in Democratic hands and a bill was produced to revise the Apportionment Act to give one House of Representatives seat for roughly 2/3 of the population that is currently necessary to have a rep, it could be argued that doing so would be more democratic (lower case “d” but also upper case “D”) because if you’re one of 450,000 citizens trying to get the ear of your congresscritter you personally have more clout than if you’re one of 700,000 trying to do so. The original number was 30,000 just for reference.
Little blue states like Delaware and Rhode Island might view this with a jaundiced eye, although they signed onto the Interstate Voter Compact which reduces their power in a similar fashion.
The interesting thing here is that changing apportionment is a compromise. Each state still gets its two senatorial-based votes regardless of population. It just evens things up a bit.
It’s true that parts of California are pretty red but it’s the Dems that control the Statehouse so they’d be the ones “gerrymandering” the original state into several new crazy-shaped states that would always select Democratic Senators.
Basically you make cuts that run west to east. That way every new state has it’s Repubs in the Central Valley and Eastern parts but a West chockful of populated, liberal, coastal goodness.
I’m not even sure that the President has to sign off on it. The Constitution only says Congress has to agree, so a literal reading is the President is out of the loop. I’m pretty sure that’s the case with amendments, which also just says Congress. Splitting a state has not come up before, but I would expect it’s the same as when two states make some minor adjustment to their border. But I don’t know if they require the President to sign that or not.
ETA: I forgot about WV, which was split off from VA during the Civil War. Anyone know if Lincoln had to sign that bill or not?
The northern third or so (roughly everything north of Yuba City) is very red. All the way to the coast. Of course it’s also has very low population density, so if the idea is to have roughly equal populations in the successor states, it’d have to be combined with higher population areas, which are much more blue.
There’s been a movement for many years in that northern area to split off from the rest of the state, but the idea is to not include any blue urban areas, although they do want to include adjacent parts of Oregon. (Google on the state of Jefferson for more.) Most likely this would just create a western Mississippi, something the Union does not really need.
That can’t be right at a basic level, since there’s 100 senators now - twice as many as your relative thinks. But if that was just a typo and he means 101st and 102nd, how does he explain that they readjust the seats so that each party has half of the floor space? They couldn’t do that if there was no room to move seats around, since the balance changes.
Here’s a photo gallery of the Senate chamber, just looking at it one can see that there are a lot of places to add seats. You can fit more desks into the cone-shaped parts that have a lot more space at the back than the front. You can fill in the blank spaces. You can take away the ground floor gallery seating. You could even more the front line closer to the central podium.
According to the link below, it was treated like any other bill and required the president’s signature (or one of the overrides). Lincoln debated signing it, and no one seemed to think that it his signature was just for show.
But the way my scheme works those GOPsters have no say in the matter. They don’t get to draw the state boundaries, the Democratic-controlled legislature in Sacto does. The votes of some chuckle-head Assemblymen from Modoc or Lassen County matter not.
Hell, everything north of Yubu would probably be in the same new state as San Francisco or Oakland. They’d never get to vote in a GOP senator in that new state.
I’m guessing that the fewer chunks it gets whacked into, the less chance there is of an immediate red state. The traditional argument is to divide the state in two, to produce the diet states: Low Cal and No Cal.
Yeah, that was my bad. He didn’t specify a number and my brain was in the # of states category. Thanks to everyone who gave corrections, especially for the pictures.
It could be worse. I recall a late-night category error that resulted in an explosion.
Theoretically, couldn’t it be divided into say, 8 or 10 states without a single one being GOP controlled? That’s just standard gerrymandering, isn’t it?
You make bizarre shaped maps that have large portions of the conservative eastern and central portions joined by skinny land bridges to parts of the metro areas of LA, San Diego, SJ, SF, Oakland.
Completely theoretically? Maybe. Getting enough people to agree, so that there’s even an ice cube’s chance in hell of it happening? Nope. And by happening, I mean having enough agreement that California can petition congress.
Then there’s the argument over the names. With two new states it’s North California and South California. More than that? Maybe Central California would fly. Beyond that lies chaos.
Yes. Altering all the flags to accommodate a new state would probably be an couple orders of magnitude more expensive than altering the seating arrangements of the senate.
I’m not buying the argument that this would be more (lower-case) democratic. Sure, if each congressperson represents 450,000 citizens, each individual voter will have more of a say in the selection of that person than if the congressperson represents 700,000 citizens. But that congressperson will have less of a say in the overall House of Representatives thus elected (because there will be, ceteris paribus, more representatives). These two effects would cancel each other out.
If you consider only the value of each congressperson’s vote, you’re correct. But legislators do a lot more than just voting on stuff. They participate in committees and projects that interest them, assist on drafting legislation, run constituent services, etc. Having more reps would also make it easier for states to implement multi-member districts that could use proportional representation.
