The news that Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper’s ballot initiative to split the state into six parts has failed to make the 2016 ballot is great news. It means that the voters were wise enough — and skeptical enough — to kill this bad idea in the crib.

Tim Draper invested a lot of money into getting this initiative before the voters — $5 million, in fact. The idea got lots of national attention and plenty of media.

But the idea of separating California into six different states, creating six new governments, is a crazy idea, and the voters knew it. Draper’s group said they had enough valid signatures (they turned in 1.3 million and 808,000 need to be valid), but the secretary of state said they only had 752,685.

That means despite the money and the visibility, Draper’s group couldn’t convince enough legitimate voters that this was a good idea. As is so often the case, the voters are smarter than monied interests think they are.