100,000 Americans ask to secede from the US

GlobalPost

Americans unhappy with the outcome of the election are flooding the White House with requests for their state to secede from the US.

More than 100,000 people have signed onto petitions filed with the White House's "We the People" website, all in the week since the presidential election, reports the BBC.

The petitions represent 20 states, most in the deep red sections of the country that voted for Mitt Romney, but several were from the Northeast.

In all, petitions have been filed for Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, reports the Washington Post.  

Later on Monday, the press secretary to Texas Gov. Rick Perry told the Dallas Morning News that the governor doesn't support secession.

"Gov. Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it," Catherine Frazier said in a statement.

According to the Washington Post, the majority of the petitions used the following language: 

As the founding fathers of the United States of America made clear in the Declaration of Independence in 1776:                                                                                                            
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”                                                                             
“…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government…”

Texas was more specific in its request, citing "blatant abuses" of rights such as the National Defense Authorization Act and the Transportation Security Administration, reports POLITICO.

"Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government," the Texas petition states. 

The single petition has already reached the 25,000-signature threshold at which the White House promises a response, reports the BBC. Texans voted for Romney by 15 points over President Obama. 

[View the story "Unhappy Americans want out of the Union" on Storify]
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