The “Six Californias” initiative will not be on the ballot in 2016, after the California Secretary of State disqualified the petition for having too few legitimate signatures. I see two lessons here:

1. As karoli at Crooks and Liars says, “professional petition gatherers [are] terrible at what they do,” charging “Six Californias” mastermind Tim Draper around $1.5 million for signatures rejected by the state.

2. Trying to carve your own personal fiefdom out of the nation’s most-populous state never seems to work: