Support is growing for an online petition for Kentucky’s secession from the U.S. The petition was posted just days after President Obama was re-elected last week. It’s logged with the Obama Administration’s We The People program. The White House promises it will respond to any petition that receives at least 25,000 signatures within 30 days. The online petition currently has more than 5,000 signatures, but does not require those signing the document to be residents of Kentucky, many of which are not.
Murray State Political Science Professor Dr. Drew Sieb says this kind of behavior is not uncommon after a major political event.
“This is probably in response to the fact the voting public has become more polarized especially in the last 20 years, we’ve seen greater differences between the extremes and people pushing more and more to those extreme democrat and extreme republican positions," Sieb said. "So as that gap grows larger we are going to see people become more dissatisfied with the election.”
Sieb says this type of response is similar to many democrats proposing to move to Canada in 2004 and George W. Bush defeated John Kerry.
Murray State Political Science Professor Winfield Rose says secession could occur under a referendum vote but he says there is little chance of something like that happening.
"I suppose they could have a referendum like Puerto Rico did on becoming a state You could have a referendum on becoming an unstate so to speak, seceding from the Union, but no one has to pay any attention to it," Rose said. " I mean the whole thing is just bizarre. For a state like Kentucky to talk about seceding from the Union is just absurdity on stilts.”
Although he sees no real outcome from the petition, Rose says the petition itself is a mark of how dissatisfied a group of Americans are with the current administration. Other states petitioning for a peaceful secession include Alabama, Colorado, Florida, New York and Texas.