When I talk to students about democracy (the history of the institution in ancient Greece), I like to remind them that the word does not mean, as we are always taught, power to the people. Deme is a Greek word which originally referred to the smallest geo-political unit within a polis (think: municipality). In this sense, democracy means power to the municipalities (the word eventually comes to refer to the people living in those municipalities, and then simply people). Kleisthenes saw that self governance was more easily accomplished on the local level--after all, who knows the local issues and problems better than those immediately affected? For this reason, I've always been sympathetic to the notion of secession (at least in principle). However, I cannot help but laugh at this:
Here is the full story.
The issue is not that secession is bad in principle, but that the petitioners seem to be driven by the fact of Obama's reelection. In other words, this is a slightly different version of the classic, "if Obama/Bush/Gore wins, I'm moving to Canada". The possibility that your candidate may lose is a part of any democracy which relies on voting. Seceding from the union will not change that--unless your intention is to secede so that you can establish a dictatorship.
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