
California secession movement pushes forward on ballot question
Alan Riquelmy
(CN) — It’s a long way to 546,651 signatures, but Marcus Ruiz Evans feels good that this time he can do it.
Evans, with the Calexit movement, has until July 22 to get those signatures — a requirement for his proposed ballot question to reach voters in the November 2028 election.
The question: “Should California leave the United States and become a free and independent country?”
If at least 50% of registered California voters cast ballots in the election, and it passes by at least 55%, it would mean Golden State residents have issued a vote of no confidence in the United States. It would be a formal statement that they want California to become an independent country.
It wouldn’t make the Golden State its own sovereign nation. Instead, it would create a commission to report on the viability of the state becoming an independent country.
It’s not the first time Evans and his organization have tried to get a secession question on the California ballot. They didn’t have the manpower to garner enough signatures some 10 years ago. Interest grew during the first Donald Trump administration, though Evans said people thought his election was a fluke and the Calexit movement again faded.
This time is different, he said. Trump won the popular and electoral last year.
“We’re in a different time where weird things are happening,” Evans said in a phone interview.
Evans sees many factors in favor of a successful vote this time around. The State of Jefferson movement, a decades-old effort to split some California and Oregon counties into a new state, has failed because its members supported Trump — a candidate most California voters dislike, he said.
A state that has a supermajority of Democrats in its Legislature would be more amenable to leaving a Trump-led nation, Evans said. Additionally, a vote for secession would lead the state’s congressional delegation to sign on, or face losing their political careers.
U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, has called for a national divorce. Evans said a member of Congress openly talking of secession hasn’t occurred since the Civil War.
Additionally, a Civil War-era U.S. Supreme Court decision — Texas v. White — gives states the ability to secede, he added.
“Texas v. White says you can secede with ‘consent of the states,’ which is what we are doing,” Evans said in an email.
Some legal and political minds question not only the legality of a state seceding, but the chance voters would ever approve it.
David A. Carrillo, executive director of UC Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center, has pushed back against arguments favoring secession for years.
Carrillo in a 2016 blog post argued that Texas v. White isn’t legal authority supporting a state’s ability to secede. The high court’s opinion, in fact, declared that states have no right to secede.
The primary holding of the decision was that states have no right to unilaterally secede. That means the Confederate states remained a part of the United States during the Civil War.
In a statement to Courthouse News, Carrillo said that the high court in Texas v. White theorized that the only conceivable method a state might secede is through revolution or consent of the states.
“That at best is a speculative recipe for how to destroy the nation, not authority for single-state secession,” he added.
Carrillo in his blog post also pointed to a letter penned by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who said, “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”
Additionally, Carrillo in his statement noted that citizen initiatives can only make law. Calexit’s measure is advisory, not law.
“So, if this passes, the courts likely will invalidate it,” Carrillo wrote.
A poll released this month and commissioned by the Independent California Institute — which stated that its first principle is for California to become a “fully functioning sovereign and autonomous nation” — offers some support for secessionists.
According to the poll, 61% of respondents said the state would be better off if it peacefully seceded, and 63% supported using “hardball” tactics to gain autonomy.
Kim Nalder, a political science professor at Sacramento State, said she believed it’s possible the Calexit movement could gain the necessary number of signatures needed to reach the ballot. She pointed to a series of “dramatic actions” in the first few days of the Trump administration that could tap into voters’ emotions.
That anxiety felt by Democrats, and even some Republicans, could lead to a desire to let off steam, Nalder said. Signing a petition to put the secession question on the ballot could be a valve relieving some of that pressure.
Also, many people may find signing a petition an easier decision than voting on a ballot question, Nalder said.
“It’s symbolic, almost,” she added.
A vote in favor of secession would be akin to an anti-Trump message. Nalder said she doesn’t think a push for secession would be an issue if former Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, had won the White House.
James Adams, a distinguished professor at UC Davis' political science department, also said that a Democrat in the White House would have drastically reduced any secession talk.
Instead, Adams sees Trump’s talk of deporting undocumented Californians — and a fear that the nation is sliding toward authoritarianism — could lead to support for leaving the union.
However, both Adams and Nalder said it appears no state can secede.
“I don’t think there’s any legal route to seceding from the country,” Nalder said.