The enormous state of California will not be split up into six individual states as part of an initiative that might have made it onto the November 2016 ballot. That proposal failed to get enough votes today, reports The Los Angeles Times, making an earthquake the more likely candidate for creating divisions in the most populous state in the US. The idea was pitched by venture capitalist Tim Draper late last year as a way to give certain regions of the state better political representation. In a proposal to the California Attorney General, Draper said the state had become "ungovernable" due to the uneven spread of "enormous and diverse economies."

Following the news, the group behind the Six Californias initiative said it believes it had more than the required number of signatures to make it through, and is reviewing the figures. "Six Californias collected more than enough signatures to place the initiative on the November 2016 ballot and we are confident that a full check of the signatures would confirm that fact," Draper said in a statement. "The internal verification process conducted by our signature-gathering firm predicted a much higher validity rate than the random sample result."