The California Supreme Court judges will not decide whether to divide the state

A measure that would divide California into three parts will not feature on the November ballot, the state supreme court announced Wednesday, marking the latest defeat for an attempt to reinvent the population the most. populated country.

The judges ordered the secretary of state not to put the initiative of the ballot before the voters, saying that important questions were raised about its validity. The court will now consider a challenge from the Planning and Conservation League, an environmental group that argued that the split in California would radically change the structure of its government beyond what can be accomplished through a simple initiative of vote. allow the measure to stay on the ballot outweighs the potential harm by delaying the proposal to a future election ", the judges wrote in a unanimous decision.

They said time constraints have them The capitalist Tim Draper, who spent more than $ 1.7 million on his "Cal 3" initiative, tried for years to divide the state, arguing he was becoming ungovernable because of his size, disparity in wealth and geographic diversity.His latest attempt to divide California into six did not collect enough signatures to run the ballot in 2016.

"The goal of the initiative process was to be set up as a protection against a government that no longer represented its people now that protection has been corrupted," Draper said in a statement. be d & # 39; whether or not to agree with this initiative is not the way democracies are supposed to work. "

The director of the Planning and Conservation League applauded the decision.

The initiative "was a costly and imperfect system wasting billions of dollars from California taxpayers, creating chaos in utilities, including protecting our environment," Howard Penn said in a statement. It would have dismantled the world's fifth largest economy without solving a single challenge facing Californians today. "

The environmental group's pursuit says that major changes to the state's state structure require the Two-thirds approval of the legislature a constitutional convention of state

Draper argued that the measure does not go beyond what voters can adopt through an initiative. is adopted, it would be only the first step towards the split of the state, he said.

The initiative, which could appear on a future vote if the court eventually rule in his favor , search to divide the state in Northern California, California and Southern California.

Northern California would include the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, Sacramento and the counties located north of the state capital. California would be a strip of land along the coast extending from Los Angeles to Monterey. Southern California would include Fresno and the surrounding farming communities, reaching San Diego and the Mexican border.

Supporters gathered signatures from hundreds of thousands of Californians, and the secretary of state in June announced that they had enough to make the effort. general election ballot

Judges' decision leaves 11 votes for voters to weigh in November.