Silicon Valley is one step closer to being its own state. No, really.

Washington Post ^ | 07/16/2014 | By Andrea Peterson

[SeekAndFind]

Silicon Valley-based billionaire venture capitalist Timothy Draper has a dream: Six Californias. He's the major backer of a proposal that would split the nation's most populated state into six parts -- creating the new states of Jefferson, North California, Central California, South California, West California and Silicon Valley.

And now his dream is a teensy bit closer to reality: A petition for "Six Californias" has reached the 808,000 some signatures needed to get a referendum on the ballot in 2016, spokesperson Roger Salazar tells Reuters. But that doesn't mean it'll be happening anytime soon: Even if the proposal is approved by voters, it would still need congressional approval to move forward -- likely a pretty hard sell.

“Splitting California into six states would raise all sorts of concerns about the partisan balance of the Senate,” Brendan Nyhan, assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College told ABC News about the plan back in February. “I can’t imagine this would ever go anywhere.”

But perhaps more interesting than the plan's chances for success is just why Draper is so interested in slicing and dicing the Golden State -- and what it says about the civic interests of tech investors.

The proposed boundaries of the "Six Californias" plan would segregate some of the highest earning parts of California from the less prosperous agricultural areas. In fact, a report on the plan from California's non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office from earlier this year says the proposed Silicon Valley state, which would include the San Francisco Bay area along with the associated tech corridor, would have the highest per capita personal income of any state. Meanwhile, Central California, which would include Fresno and some of the most fruitful agricultural land, would have a per capita personal income that ranks dead last in the country

[SayNoToDems]

Better still...it should become a separate country.We don’t need two more Maoists in the Senate.

[SayNoToDems]

Ditto, with New York, if New York City and environs became its own state, separate from upstate. Another 2 automatic Democrat senators always in the Senate.

It's my understanding that the parts of New York State that are more than 50 miles from Central Park are majority Republican.

[Blood of Tyrants]

From what I have read, the new states must receive permission from the state they want to secede from and then they have to be admitted by Congress.

[Sivad]

Many overlapping communities with too numerous to count
research and manufacturing areas. That is what the Silicon Valley
is in a nutshell.

[Sivad]

Split California East/West. That represents the strongest political
divide. Notch out the San Diego area for the conservative East and
leave sparsely populated Humboldt County with the liberal West.
Sorry Orange County, you are on your own!