This story was originally published by Shasta Scout and is republished here with permission.
By Nevin Kallepalli & Madison Holcomb
On July 12, less than a thousand people cast votes on an issue they hope will soon determine the fate of 40 million Californians.
New California State (NCS), a movement attempting to separate from California to form its own state, held the July 12 election in order to approve a provisional constitution. According to NCS, participants representing more than 50 of California’s 58 counties voted, with some making long drives to reach one of the 26 NCS precincts.
In Shasta County, ballots were cast in an unassuming conference room at the Redding Red Lion Hotel. One especially noteworthy voter was Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters (ROV) Clint Curtis, the public official tasked with running the county’s official California election process. Many of the same local activists who have consistently cast doubt on the integrity of the Shasta Election Office over the last several years helped administer the event.
While less than 0.003% of California’s population voted in the NCS election, those who did overwhelmingly passed the movement’s draft constitution. NCS hopes to present the results to Congress in an attempt to leave behind the “tyranny and corruption” of California’s government by establishing a 51st state.
While vote totals don’t show insubstantial support for the movement, efforts to form the new state are playing out against a backdrop of intense months-long conflict between the Trump administration and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Much of that conflict centers around immigration policy, including the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles over the sharp objections of Newsom, who is widely believed to have the dual goal of defending California sovereignty and positioning himself for a future presidential run.
Speaking to reporters at Saturday’s NCS event in Shasta, voters expressed dissatisfaction about the relatively small representation that rural voters have in the California State Senate and Assembly, the perceived “invasion” of immigrants, legal recognitions afforded to transgender Californians, vaccine mandates, unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the state’s tenuous financial solvency, among other issues.
In Shasta, the NCS voting process was filmed and shared with the public via livestream. While reporters were not allowed access to the voting room, the NCS livestream of the space confirmed the involvement of Curtis, Shasta’s recently-appointed ROV, who can be seen marking a ballot and turning it in.
He declined Shasta Scout’s request to speak about his involvement in the event. Although Curtis has spoken to reporters in the past, staff said Monday that he doesn’t do media interviews. It’s a change from the stance Curtis took during while seeking the ROV position and at a campaign event shortly after his appointment, when he said that he and other staff wouldn’t “hide behind an office.”
He’s faced public scrutiny since before his appointment. Criticism has centered around his lack of election experience, inaccuracies and inconsistencies in his job application, a decision to fire his top election staffer and his connection with Shasta Election Commissioner Patty Plumb, who is also the chair of the Shasta branch of NCS.
Given Curtis’ refusal to speak with reporters this week, it is unclear how he voted on the constitution. Nevertheless, his participation signals interest in the partisan NCS movement. And Curtis is not the only person on the county’s payroll who’s participating. Chriss Street, a county contractor who’s been championed by county board Chair Kevin Crye, is the chief financial officer of NCS.
Why is NCS approving a constitution?
In efforts to create a 51st state, NCS drafted a constitution that was approved by the movement’s leaders on July 1. The group held the election last week to seek the approval of voters around the state who are aware of the NCS movement. Officials hope to produce a document that meets the demands of Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, which requires that every state protect its citizens from invasions and domestic violence while providing a “republican form of government.”
A speculative map of the boundaries of the future state includes almost all of California, with the exception of the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo and partitioned portions of Los Angeles, Sacramento, Santa Clara, Alameda and Marin.
NCS President Paul Preston told Shasta Scout that NCS plans to present the constitution to Congress in September — either via House Speaker Mike Johnson or President Donald Trump — but it would be up to a member of Congress to actually introduce a bill to ratify statehood, he said. If a member of Congress decides to introduce a bill seeking to make NCS a state, the legislative branch would scrutinize the new constitution to make sure that it meets federal standards before voting on the issue. Multiple states have followed a similar process in the past.
Preston claims that NCS has been working with Mike Johnson’s office, saying that members of the Trump administration have expressed significant support for transmitting the new constitution to Congress, although he declined to specify which members of the administration the group has interacted with so far. Spokespeople for Trump and Johnson did not respond to Shasta Scout when asked whether they have been in communication with NCS, but Preston said he’s confident that Congress will review and approve the statehood bill.
“They’ll look at the constitution on its merits,” Preston said. “There may be some negotiations to tweak something, you know, and it would be on them to come to an agreement.”
Notably, the current NCS constitution includes sections that appear to contradict past Supreme Court decisions regarding certain civil and constitutional rights. For instance, the NCS constitution defines marriage as a “covenant between one man and one woman,” something which conflicts with the Obergefell v. Hodges case, which guarantees the right to marriage to same sex couples in every state.
Asked specifically about the question of marriage equality, Preston said NCS would push Congress to allow the proposed state to define marriage only in heterosexual terms, and “see if they accept it or not.”
The West Virginia Model
The process through which states have been admitted to the union over the past 249 years has varied, depending on factors such as whether the proposed state was previously a territory or was split off from a pre-existing state.
NCS officials have said their attempted path to statehood is modeled on the birth of West Virginia, which became a state in 1863 after approval from both the state of Virginia and the federal government. In contrast to West Virginia, NCS will not be seeking the approval of California’s government, a step the movement is bypassing because officials view the state legislature to be tyrannical.
NCS leaders say they see similarities in their motivations to seek statehood and those of early West Virginians. In the 1860s, West Virginia’s struggle to statehood came out of a desire to remain part of the Union instead of seceding along with the rest of Virginia during the Civil War.
Officials with NCS claim that California is heading down a similarly treasonous path of secession as Virginia once did, prompting NCS supporters to create their own state in order to remain loyal to the nation rather than submit to what they perceive as California’s insurrectionist leaders. Preston cited COVID-19 and vaccination policies, the sanctuary state designation and bail reform as some examples of how NCS believes an insurrectionist California has tyrannically undermined the rights and safety of the people.
Unlike Virginia in 1861, California has not seceded from the Union, or even expressed interest in seceding. And there is no indication, at least publicly, that the U.S. Congress or the president have officially recognized the legitimacy of the NCS movement, as they did for West Virginia, prior to presentation to Congress.
Representation Matters
NCS President Preston calls California “a self-professed representative democracy, which is a dictatorship,” and referred to true representational democracy as “mob rule.”
In reality, California, like all states, currently operates as a republic, meaning that voters elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf. Because assembly and senatorial districts in California are determined by population size rather than geography, more populated parts of the state have more senators and assembly members in the state legislature, as compared to sparsely populated rural areas like Shasta. It’s a structure that’s designed to give each individual voter the same level of representation regardless of the geographical size of where they live.
In contrast, under New California’s proposed structure, each county would have one senator, regardless of population numbers. That would mean the 2.5 million people in Riverside County would have the same number of senators as the 8,500 people who live in Modoc. The model would redistribute power away from diverse urban voters to rural — and in the North State — largely white communities. It’s one way to address the overarching issue of representation that vexes many rural conservative California voters whose voice, they feel, is drowned out by an overwhelmingly urban and liberal California population.
“When you compare with the mighty power of L.A., San Diego and the Bay Area, they pretty much direct the state’s actions,” said Jim Burnett, a retired engineer who voted at last Saturday’s NCS election. “We’re not represented here in Shasta County and most of rural California.”
Annelise Pierce contributed reporting for this story.
Nevin Kallepalli reports for Shasta Scout as a member of the California Local News Fellowship.
Madison Holcomb is a summer intern with Shasta Scout as part of the Scripps Howard News Fund and Institute for Nonprofit News. She’s interested in reporting on the environment, criminal justice and politics.
