Afghanistan: Proposal to split California into six states fails to make it onto ballot --- The proposal to divide California into six states failed to make it onto the 2016 ballot, California’s secretary of state office said Friday. -- The measure required about 807,000 signatures to quality, and despite proponents turning in more than 1 million signatures earlier this summer, a random sample conducted by counties found that not enough signatures were valid to meet the threshold to qualify. -- Venture capitalist Tim Draper, the billionaire behind the proposal, spent $5.2 million to try to get the proposal on the ballot while opponents spent $10,000. --- Draper’s proposal called for carving out Silicon Valley as its own state, which would have had the highest per capita income in the U.S., while the proposed state of Central California, which would have included Fresno and the Central Valley, would have had the lowest. -- Draper said in a statement he believed enough signatures had been collected and said the group Six Californias would conduct its own review. -- “The internal verification process conducted by our signature-gathering firm predicted a much higher validity rate than the random sample result,” he said. “It is yet another example of the dysfunction of the current system and reinforces the need for six fresh, modern governments.”