Conservatives Call a Two State California

[SGOS]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/17/new-california-movement-seeks-to-divide-golden-state-in-half.html

This time the boundary is proposed east to west instead of north and south.  As stated in the FOX interview, California is too liberal, giving too much power to the west coast liberal elite.  An East California/West California divide solves the problem by creating two states, one Republican and one Democrat which would be fairer, I guess.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

They'd get another senator or two in the Monkey House, I mean Senate.

[Baruch]

If people open up ... where the boundaries are, and what is the basis for State or national constitutions, they are opening a can of worms.  My problem with the South prior to 1861 is twofold ... lack of charity to anyone other than the White upper class, and overweening ambition.  I suspect that becoming President of a new country, was the only way someone like Jefferson Davis could have become chief executive.

Four way split in California ... N California doesn't like S California either.  The coast between LA and San Fran is a playground of the rich.

[Unbeliever]

All those American flags would be obsolete, we'd have to put on another star. Seems an awful lot of work just to make some conservatives happy.

[Baruch]

All those American flags would be obsolete, we'd have to put on another star. Seems an awful lot of work just to make some conservatives happy.

Leftists are congenitally unhappy people.  So I just ignore them.  Sad.

[SGOS]

I was in grade school when they added the last two stars.  They asked the public for suggestions, one of the few times the government actually took public input for much of anything.  It was a big deal in our art class to design a flag, and it presented difficult problem.  How do you create a 6 X 8 field that has a identical regularity of repetitive lines out of 50?  The answer of course, is that you can't.  But we were determined tykes.  5 X 10 was entirely the wrong shape, and with limited knowledge of long division, we couldn't think of any other arrangement of 5 X 10 that would produce the same effect.  Personally, I would have told Alaska and Hawaii to go take a hike and leave our flag alone.

The eventual solution, adopted by the big people, was to stagger the lines and hide the irregularity in the non-pattern.  I personally didn't like it.  It looked messy.  One suggestion that was among the finalists was to assemble the fifty 5 pointed stars into one big star, again a very foxy way of hiding an irregularity (if there even was one) in one of the arms of the big star, but congress didn't like it, even though I thought it was the best one.  Maybe it reminded the senators of the "United States of Texas."  So we ended up with a messy flag.

This was the biggest problem, the US has ever solved and such a head ache for everyone that it was decided Puerto Rico would never become a state until we had enough total stars to fill out the blue field the way it was before.

[SGOS]

Instead of dividing California in two, I think it would be better to merge California with Wyoming and Kansas so we could just get rid of two worthless red states.  We would also have 48 states again and get the real flag back.

[Hydra009]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/17/new-california-movement-seeks-to-divide-golden-state-in-half.html

This time the boundary is proposed east to west instead of north and south.  As stated in the FOX interview, California is too liberal, giving too much power to the west coast liberal elite.  An East California/West California divide solves the problem by creating two states, one Republican and one Democrat which would be fairer, I guess.

Bleeding Kansas part deux?

Something tells me this isn't a good idea.  I've heard of the cost and headaches associated with changing road signs from imperial to metric, I can't imagine what sawing a state in half would be like.

But I would love to run the experiment and watch the results of two communities enacting polar opposite policies and see which one does better in the long term.  My bet is that the Republican utopia wouldn't fare so well.

[trdsf]

Instead of dividing California in two, I think it would be better to merge California with Wyoming and Kansas so we could just get rid of two worthless red states.  We would also have 48 states again and get the real flag back.

Nah, merge the Dakotas, and then Nebraska and Kansas.  Call 'em respectively Dakota and Nebraskansas.

Curiously, for the one year that the 49 star flag was official, they didn't go with the "obvious" 7x7 grid, but with a 7x7 offset pattern:

[GSOgymrat]

That is some next-level gerrymandering.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

People were worried about some kind of optical illusion with the straight 7x7. That's the sum of what I remember about it. Well, that and a stuffed moose.

[SGOS]

That is some next-level gerrymandering.

Yeah, it's taking gerrymandering to new heights, but they don't call it that for obvious reasons.

[Baruch]

Yeah, it's taking gerrymandering to new heights, but they don't call it that for obvious reasons.

Governor Gerry has dibs on the original term.  In honor of the current Moonbeam of California, call it Browniemandering.

[SGOS]

Governor Gerry has dibs on the original term.  In honor of the current Moonbeam of California, call it Browniemandering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
Below is at least one explanation of the word origin.

The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette on 26 March 1812. The word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts state senate election districts under Governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced /ˈɡɛri/; 1744â€"1814). In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a mythological salamander.[4]

The original gerrymander, and original 1812 gerrymander cartoon, depict the Essex South state senatorial district for the legislature of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts.[5]

Gerrymander is a portmanteau of the governor's last name and the word salamander. The redistricting was a notable success. Although in the 1812 election both the Massachusetts House and governorship were won by Federalists by a comfortable margin and cost Gerry his job, the redistricted state senate remained firmly in Democratic-Republican hands.[4][clarification needed]

The author of the term gerrymander may never be definitively established. Historians widely believe that the Federalist newspaper editors Nathan Hale, and Benjamin and John Russell coined the term, but the historical record does not have definitive evidence as to who created or uttered the word for the first time.[5]

Appearing with the term, and helping spread and sustain its popularity, was a political cartoon depicting a strange animal with claws, wings and a dragon-like head satirizing the map of the oddly shaped district. This cartoon was most likely drawn by Elkanah Tisdale, an early 19th-century painter, designer, and engraver who was living in Boston at the time.[6] Tisdale had the engraving skills to cut the woodblocks to print the original cartoon.[7] These woodblocks survive and are preserved in the Library of Congress.[8]

The word gerrymander was reprinted numerous times in Federalist newspapers in Massachusetts, New England, and nationwide during the remainder of 1812.[9] This suggests some organized activity of the Federalists to disparage Governor Gerry in particular, and the growing Democratic-Republican party in general. Gerrymandering soon began to be used to describe not only the original Massachusetts example, but also other cases of district shape manipulation for partisan gain in other states. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word's acceptance was marked by its publication in a dictionary (1848) and in an encyclopedia (1868).[10] Since the letter g of the eponymous Gerry is pronounced with a hard g /É¡/ as in get, the word gerrymander was originally pronounced /ˈɡɛrimændÉ™r/. However, pronunciation as /ˈdÊ'É›rimændÉ™r/, with a soft g /dÊ'/ as in gentle, has become the accepted pronunciation.

From time to time, other names are given the "-mander" suffix to tie a particular effort to a particular politician or group. These include the 1852 "Henry-mandering", "Jerrymander" (referring to California Governor Jerry Brown),[11] "Perrymander" (a reference to Texas Governor Rick Perry),[12][13] and "Tullymander" (after the Irish politician James Tully).[14]

Also of interest are some of the strategies involved

"Cracking" involves spreading voters of a particular type among many districts in order to deny them a sufficiently large voting bloc in any particular district.[16] An example would be to split the voters in an urban area among several districts wherein the majority of voters are suburban, on the presumption that the two groups would vote differently, and the suburban voters would be far more likely to get their way in the elections.
"Packing" is to concentrate as many voters of one type into a single electoral district to reduce their influence in other districts.[16] In some cases, this may be done to obtain representation for a community of common interest (such as to create a majority-minority district), rather than to dilute that interest over several districts to a point of ineffectiveness (and, when minority groups are involved, to avoid likely lawsuits charging racial discrimination). When the party controlling the districting process has a statewide majority, packing is usually not necessary to attain partisan advantage; the minority party can generally be "cracked" everywhere. Packing is therefore more likely to be used for partisan advantage when the party controlling the districting process has a statewide minority, because by forfeiting a few districts packed with the opposition, cracking can be used in forming the remaining districts.
"Hijacking" redraws two districts in such a way as to force two incumbents to run against each other in one district, ensuring that one of them will be eliminated.[16]
"Kidnapping" moves an incumbent's home address into another district.[16] Reelection can become more difficult when the incumbent no longer resides in the district, or possibly faces reelection from a new district with a new voter base. This is often employed against politicians who represent multiple urban areas, in which larger cities will be removed from the district in order to make the district more rural.

[Cavebear]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
Below is at least one explanation of the word origin.
Also of interest are some of the strategies involved

I know all about Gerrymandering.  But you explained it well!

I would like to solve it with an inked grid on a stste map.  SLAM! 

Well, it would probably be better than what exists...

But I have a suggestion.  Print out a State map with red dots representing 10,000 or 50,000 citizens, whatever works.  Give the map to a 12 year old and tell that one to "make the smallest equal groups" whatever number of electoral votes for that state.

Viola.