“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.”
So if Congress and the CA Legislature were willing to approve the division of CA into multiple states, it would be a done deal. Since that would increase the number of Senate seats that what is now CA would have, the state legislature would probably be inclined to support it, since it increases the opportunities of career advancement.
OTOH, you’d have a hard time getting the approval of the state legislatures to merge two existing states into one, since the combined entity would lose two Senators.
I’d been thinking about this question recently, due to the various discussions here about the Electoral College at the end of last year. Since the people in small states are effectively overrepresented in the EC (as well as in the US Senate), one remedy to the problem (if one considers it a problem) is for the large states to break themselves up into smaller ones, thus levelling the field somewhat.
I don’t think this would solve flowbark’s problem that “The pot of money that Sacramento controls is large enough to attract a broad phalanx of lobbyists, but without the detailed media scrutiny that comes at the federal level.” In the states I’ve lived in as an adult - VA, MD, and SC - same situation. Until there’s a media culture of covering state governments, I think we’re SOL there. (Name one state govt reporter or columnist, other than Molly Ivins.)
I’d like to see VA (my home state that I no longer live in :)) break up into Northern Virginia, and Downstate. We’d let the downstate part keep the VA name, as long as they let us go, but it won’t happen. No.Va. has the resources and the problems of a booming, rapidly growing urban/suburban area, but Richmond has all the power. So Richmond won’t lift a finger to solve No.Va.'s problems, nor will it delegate the authority so that No.Va. can solve them itself.
Think Richmond would let No.Va. go its own way, since it seems to have such low regard for it? Not a chance. No.Va. pays downstate’s bills, and downstate likes it that way.