by David Martosko
Conservatives have voted more than 375,000 times since Election Day
to pick up their marbles and go home. That’s how many virtual signatures
appeared Monday night, as clocks in Washington, D.C. chimed midnight,
on petitions asking President Barack Obama’s administration to allow 47
of the 50 U.S. states to secede from the country.
A petition from an Arlington,
Texas
man, launched Nov. 9 via the Obama White House website’s “We the
People” tool, had more than 58,000 signatures. That’s more than twice
the 25,000 it had Monday morning, a number required to trigger an
automatic White House review, according to the administration’s own
published rules.
(RELATED: Texas petition reaches 25,000 signatures, triggering White House review)
A similar petition from a
Louisiana native crossed the 25,000 threshold as Monday drew to a close on the East Coast.
Launched Nov. 7, the day after Obama won re-election, the Pelican
State’s spark set off an Internet-driven cascade of disaffected tea
partiers and other conservatives looking — as one petition organizer
told The Daily Caller via a “direct message” on Twitter — “just to do
something, anything, to show we’re not going away quietly.”
It’s not clear whether, or to what extent, individuals are signing
more than one petition. The White House’s online rules do not prohibit
Americans from signing a petition that would not affect states where
they live.
The complete list of states with open petitions includes
Alabama,
Alaska,
Arkansas,
Arizona,
California,
Colorado,
Connecticut,
Delaware,
Florida,
Georgia,
Hawaii,
Idaho,
Illinois,
Indiana,
Iowa,
Kansas,
Kentucky,
Louisiana,
Maryland,
Massachusetts,
Michigan,
Minnesota,
Mississippi,
Missouri,
Montana,
Nebraska,
Nevada,
New Hampshire,
New Jersey,
New Mexico,
New York,
North Carolina,
North Dakota,
Ohio,
Oklahoma,
Oregon,
Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island,
South Carolina,
South Dakota,
Tennessee,
Texas,
Utah,
Virginia,
West Virginia,
Wisconsin and
Wyoming.
Nine states’ “We the People” entries include multiple competing petitions, The Daily Caller determined.
California,
Georgia,
Missouri,
New York,
Oklahoma,
South Carolina and
Wisconsin are each represented by at least two petitions. TheDC was able to locate
three for
Pennsylvania.
The only three states that lack secession petitions are Maine, Vermont and Washington.
(RELATED: White House website deluged with secession petitions)
According to the White House, petitions have 30 days to gather 25,000
signatures before the administration will automatically review them.
One at least one occasion, however, President Obama responded to a
petition that collected only
12,240 signatures: a request for the White House’s beer recipe.
All for show?
White House website petitions are largely a symbolic measure. Serious
observers don’t expect the federal government to allow any state to
withdraw from the U.S. on the basis of electronic “yes” votes from — in
Louisiana’s case — less than one-half of one percent of residents.
Any realistic effort to turn 50 states into 49 would have to
originate from a state’s government — not from the White House or its
website. And the U.S. Constitution is silent on the legality of any
state declaring itself independent.
The Civil War, of course, saw several such efforts, the last one by North Carolina in 1861.
But Middlebury College in Vermont — ironically one of the few states
not involved in the current website politicking — held nationwide
secessionist meetings in 2006 and 2007, drawing delegations from at
least ten states. One Vermont group, the “Second Vermont Republic,” says
its goal is “to extricate Vermont peacefully from the United States as
soon as possible.”
In a 2006 case, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that it’s illegal for
the state to secede from the U.S., blocking a ballot
initiative’s organizers from putting their measure to a vote in that
year’s elections.
Texans, however, raise more threats of secession than Americans
anywhere else, because an urban myth holds that the Republic of Texas
retained the option of withdrawing from the U.S. when it joined the
Union in 1845.
While Texas has no special power to leave the United States, it may have an option no other state can boast: In the
resolution that
Texas passed authorizing the U.S. to annex its territory, it
specifically spelled out how Texas could be divided into as many as five
separate territories. Each one, the agreement read, would be “entitled
to admission” as a new U.S. state.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office did not immediately
respond to an inquiry asking what would happen if Texas, subdivided into
five states, were suddenly entitled to 10 U.S. Senators instead of two.
Follow David on Twitter
