Imagine the following scenario: it’s the morning after the November election. Energised by the President’s recovery from the coronavirus (which has engendered an increased sympathy vote and corresponding rise in turnout from Trump’s base), the early indications in the battleground states suggest that many are staying in the red column. In Delaware, Joe Biden’s team is telling his crowd of supporters to hold tight because the final outcome is far from determined, given the sheer number of postal ballots yet to be processed.
Weeks ensue and a multitude of these postal ballots are contested in the courts. Soon after, they are appealed to the highest legal authority. The now heavily Trump-laden Supreme Court (including its newest member, the recently confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett) largely adjudicates in the GOP’s favour. But there’s still no definitive outcome in the Electoral College tally. Encouraged by Hillary Clinton, Biden refuses to concede.
Absent a determination in the electoral college, the US Constitution mandates a vote in the House of Representatives where Speaker Nancy Pelosi will lead a roll call of voters. The only problem here is that if the determination goes to Congress (which has only happened once before in the nation’s history), each state gets one vote, and Republicans now control 26 of the 50 state delegations. Assuming the party lines hold, that would mean re-election for Trump.
Democratic supporters are in a state of hysteria. Feeling cheated out of the popular vote yet again, violent protests surge across the country. Some of the biggest are in California, whose residents are tired of having their votes persistently nullified by tiny states like Wyoming or South Dakota. After a few weeks of riots and the National Guard’s inability to quell the unrest, a dormant “Calexit” movement springs to life…
Secession has not been seriously contemplated in the US since April 1861, when Confederate guns around Charleston Harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina just over a month after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. The Union’s victory in the four-year long Civil War, along with a later constitutional ruling in the case of Texas v White in 1869 was thought to have settled once and for all the issue of unilateral secession.
But this does not preclude a constitutional renegotiation. Much like Brexit, once seen as a wild-eyed fringe movement, a California independence movement is no longer fanciful. Since the election of Trump, the idea has been gaining traction: a 2017 Reuters poll suggested that one in three Californians was supportive of an independence movement. In the context of a highly contested election in which Trump is re-elected, that’s almost certain to rise.
A California Independence Referendum initiative was drafted last July, a proposed initiative that, if qualified by the California Secretary of State, would allow a popular vote on whether to leave the Union to be on the state ballot by 2022. It is unlikely that this process would lead to civil war. Indeed, when confronted with the happy political implications of the largest Democratic state leaving the union, Republicans might welcome “Calexit”.
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