Secession petitions crop up with Obama win

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- Online petitions in 16 states have cropped up in the wake of President Barack Obama's re-election, seeking to secede from the union, government officials said.

Using the Obama administration's own We the People website allowing Internet petitions to be lodged with the White House, people in 17 states have asked for permission to leave the union. Most cite the Declaration of Independence -- which isn't a legal document -- as their grounds.

None of the petitions cite Obama's re-election explicitly as the reason for seeking secession, though none of the petitions existed before Tuesday when he was re-elected, the website Politico.com reported Monday.

The two largest petitions are from Texas and Louisiana. Both have more than 10,000 signatures. The Texas petition only needs 7,000 more before it would force an official White House response, as per the rules the Obama administration set forth for petitions on the site.

Other states where petitions have originated include: Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Arkansas, South Carolina and Missouri.