A State Just Got Permission To Begin The Secession Process, So Pack Your Bags

Supporters for the campaign for California to secede from the United States scored a big victory this week, as they can officially begin collecting signatures to get the initiative on the ballot in 2018.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla approved the proposed initiative, dubbed "Calexit," on Thursday, LA Times reports.

"Calexit," which is being spearheaded by a group called Yes California, has six months to get the 585,407 signatures needed from registered voters to qualify for the ballot.

The ballot measure being proposed would remove provisions in California's constitution that state, "California is an inseparable part of the United States and that the United States Constitution is the supreme law of the land."

Yes California started back in 2015, but started gaining more and more momentum after Trump was elected.

Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in California by a significant margin.

Clinton won 61.5 percent of the vote in the state, while Trump garnered just 31.5 percent of the vote.

Overall, Clinton had 4,269,978 more votes than Trump in California.

So, it's not surprising a movement for secession is gaining support in the state.

Speaking with New York Daily News on Friday, Yes California spokesman Marcus Ruiz Evans stated,

California and America are different cultures, very different. Donald Trump never would have been a candidate here, not even a party nominee. Do we need more evidence than that?

Evans also told LA Times,

California loses [by] being a part of America culturally and financially. It could be a nation all its own, everybody knows that. The only question is if they want to break off.

If the ballot measure Yes California is proposing actually gets the necessary signatures and voters end up supporting it, there are a number of major legal obstacles Calexit supporters would have to overcome.

There's nothing in the Constitution that gives a state a path toward secession.

When thousands of people in Texas petitioned the White House to "peacefully be granted the right to withdraw from the United States" in 2012, it responded,

Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States 'in order to form a more perfect union' through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot -- a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it.

In short, it doesn't seem very likely this will be successful.

But it is a major sign that people in many parts of the country despise Donald Trump, who currently has the lowest approval rating of any new president since 1945.

Citations: 'Calexit' organizers can now start collecting signatures to get California secession on the ballot (LA Times)