Oregon and California propose secession in wake of Trump election

Lizzy Acker
Oregon Live
Fri, 11 Nov 2016 15:51 UTC

© Beth Nakamura

A swarm of protesters marched through Portland Wednesday night in protest of the presidential election results.

Oregon Live update: The petition for this ballot measure has been withdrawn after overwhelming positive and negative responses.

Two days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, two Portlanders have submitted a petition for a 2018 ballot initiative to have Oregon secede from the United States.

On Thursday morning, Jennifer Rollins, a lawyer, and Christian Trejbal, a writer, filed the Oregon Secession Act.

"Oregonian values are no longer the values held by the rest of the United States," Trejbal said over the phone Thursday.

Those values? "Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness," Trejbal said, "plus equality."

"Obviously," he said, the ballot proposal "came about partially in response to the election results on Tuesday."

"But," he added, "it's been developing over time."

Trejbal said that he and Rollins are hoping to start a serious conversation in Oregon about what it would mean to peacefully leave the United States. They opted for 2018 to give Oregonians some time to really think about what seceding from the union would mean.

Some Californians have already expressed interest in seceding and the language of the Oregon proposal includes the option to bring other states into a "Constitutional Convention."

Trejbal said that joining forces with other states like Washington, California and Nevada is "a viable way to go forward."

These states, he said, "could all get together and form a nation that uphold the values that we share."

To start the ballot title drafting process, the Oregon Secession Act must receive 1,000 signatures. Trejbal said he and Rollins would be at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland on Thursday night to begin the process of getting those signatures.

You can read the Oregon Secession Act here.

Comment: The 'Calexit' movement could gain traction and come up for vote in 2019:

The Yes California movement still has a way to go, however. President Louis Marinelli has tried to get the referendum on the ballot in the past, but has yet to reach the 400,000 signatures needed to appear on the ballot. However, Marinelli is looking to try again and get an initiative on the ballot in 2018 when Californians choose their governor for a referendum in 2019.

Even if the initiative passes, that may not be enough to stop California from skedaddling away from a Trump presidency. The laws surrounding states' secession is murky at best, as pro-secession Texans learned the hard way earlier this year.

There are no clear paths for a state to leave the US, and the last time any state really made an active attempt was in the Civil War. "The Civil War played a very big role in establishing the power of the federal government and cementing that the federal government has the final say in these issues," Eric McDaniel, Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Texas Tribune.