24 ms·

Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

271 points by rmason 5y ago

Tempest1981 5y ago
How is the 6-Californians proposal going, I wonder? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias
- Nicksil 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias
  - Tempest1981 5y ago
    Thanks, fixed the mobile link
- thehappypm 5y ago
  I love how gerrymandered these proposals are. Make sure that the Bay Area is split across two states, so that both stay blue.
  - CameronNemo 5y ago
    The person who sponsored the 6 californias proposal was fairly conservative / capitalistic. I doubt he was attempting to create more states that leaned toward Democrats. Also have you ever been to Marin? A lot of people there are fairly "conservative".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jandrese 5y ago
    The even more crazy part is the proposed Jefferson has less than 1/10 the population of West or South California but still has a higher population than both Dakotas, Washington DC, Alaska, Vermont, or Wyoming. West California would still be one of the most populous states in the union, coming in just behind Ohio in 7th place and South California would be nipping on its heels. Silicon Valley would be ranked near Tennessee. As crazy as this proposal sounds, it's probably less crazy than having almost 40 million people be represented by just 2 senators when Wyoming has the same number of senators for barely half a million people.
    - sharkmerry 5y ago
      > it's probably less crazy than having almost 40 million people be represented by just 2 senators when Wyoming has the same number of senators for barely half a million people. This was purposely the design of the Senate. This complaint should be more applied to the House, where we stopped increasing the number of reps as population grew
      - CameronNemo 5y ago
        The Senate was designed by crazy people.
      - jandrese 5y ago
        I don’t think the founding fathers really understood how much the population of the states would diverge over the years.
        _delirium 5y ago
        I didn't have a good offhand feel for how the ratio of large to small state populations has changed, so for whatever it's worth, the ratio between the largest and smallest state at various times: 1790: 12x (Virginia : Delaware) 1850: 36x (New York : Florida) 1900: 173x (New York : Nevada) 1950: 93x (New York : Nevada) 2000: 69x (California : Wyoming) 2020: 68x (California : Wyoming)
        crocodiletears 5y ago
        Iirc, the least populous states in the union were about 7% (~1.5% of the national population) the population of the most populous (Virginia). Within 30 years of the constitution's ratification, Indiana was granted statehood with a population equivalent to .8% of the national population. It's a far cry from Wyoming being ~1% the population of California (~.17% of the US pop), but I think they and the first few generations of american politicians were reasonably aware of the potential spread.
  - klipt 5y ago
    You know we could solve gerrymandering entirely by using proportional representation like many other democracies do.
pcan77 5y ago
Why not just move to Idaho then? Or some other red state?
- dharmab 5y ago
  In order to create 2 new Senate seats.
  - cronix 5y ago
    Changing the border wouldn't change senate seats. Oregon would still get 2 senators, and Idaho will still have 2 just like all other states. A new 51st state isn't being created. Representatives would change a bit though since they are population based.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- throwkeep 5y ago
  Guessing they like some combination of geography, neighborhood, house, job where they live?
  - cronix 5y ago
    Most are farmers who have been working the same land for generations. They know it inside and out under all sorts of conditions. It's kind of trivial to move a household vs an entire farm system. It can take several years to get it all up and running again, depending on your crop/animals of course. There is no political back and forth like there used to be where you'd have republicans controlling things for a time and then democrats. It's been mostly Portland democrats controlling the state for over 20 years now. The needs of most of the state, by geography but which has a lower population, are not the same as those in the 1 big city the state has, so a lot of people are interested in changing that with democratic votes. Since Portland pays the lionshare of taxes for the state, you'd think they'd be happy getting rid of the poorer parts of the states that they have to currently subsidize. Seems like it would be a win-win for everybody involved. What are the downsides? If you look at the state senate map, there is a lot more red land mass than blue. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oregon_Senate_map.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oregon_Senate_map.pn...
UncleOxidant 5y ago
As an Oregonian not living in one of those sparsely-populated counties that voted for secession, I wonder why the folks who want to be part of Idaho don't just vote with their feet and move there? There's no border wall keeping them in Oregon. These votes are just symbolic and won't get them to their Idaho paradise near as quickly as a U-Haul could.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Because voting is easy and moving is hard.
- dumbfoundded 5y ago
  The whole point of democracy is to vote to change things you don't like about your government. I don't agree with them but I respect their right to vote on it. I wouldn't respect or legitimize a violent insurrection.
  - UncleOxidant 5y ago
    Yeah, but it's not like this vote is going to accomplish anything. It's just symbolic. If they really want to live under a more conservative government, well, there's one right there to the east.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - JohnWhigham 5y ago
    >I wouldn't respect or legitimize a violent insurrection. You know that's how the US was formed, right?
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      Sure, but the future can be better than the past. It would be wonderful for humans if the process of changing sovereignty were normally non-violent.
dumbfoundded 5y ago
For reference, this is about 100K people of 4.2M in Oregon (1). The rural counties of Southern Oregon and Northern California have been proposing the state of Jefferson for a while now (2). From my experience living there for a few years, it's the most libertarian place I've ever seen. It's like Texas without the Christianity. People there generally support gay marriage, abortion, and cannabis legalization but also low taxes, no gun restrictions and limited government. (1) https://www.oregon-demographics.com/counties_by_population https://www.oregon-demographics.com/counties_by_population (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  It varies a lot. I spent some growing up years in Southern Oregon and there definitely was a strong evangelical, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion etc. contingent in the town where I was. Lots of Birchers & KKK types as well. This was in the 70s and while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically shocking, it seems like we had a lot of similar kinds of conspiracies running rampant in small southern Oregon towns back then as well. My dad was a science teacher so we felt pretty much like an island of progressivism in a sea of very right wing folk. More than once I recall him shaking his head and muttering something like "These people are nuts!" after an exchange with a local that went off the rails into conspiracy land.
  - hprotagonist 5y ago
    >while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically shocking only if you have forgotten, as you say, the great satanic panic(s) of the 70s and 80s. And, every few decades, going back to about Carthage... https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-panic-returns-this-time-through-qanon https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-pa...
  - dumbfoundded 5y ago
    I recently moved from Eagle Point so probably not too far away from where you were. It's certainly a strange and diverse set of people. Everything from weed growers to hippies to evangelicals to conspiracy nuts and everything in between. Most of the people I met there generally distrusted the government and couldn't care less about what you did on your own land.
Tempest1981 5y ago
Doesn't Eastern Washington also have a similar demographic? Maybe combine them too.
- standardUser 5y ago
  Here is a proposal from greateridaho.org: https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Greater-Idaho-Proposal-r21.pdf https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Grea... It includes chunks of OR and CA but not WA for some reason. It may be explained in the doc.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    It’s explained in their FAQ: > Idahoans are very concerned about keeping their state as conservative as possible. They had 2.46 conservative votes per liberal vote in the 2016 presidential election, but eastern Washington only had 1.43. > Moreover, eastern Washington has a population of 1.6 million in 2017, as compared to Idaho’s population of 1.7 million. Idahoans don’t want to be outvoted by others in their own state, so they’re not likely to want to include such a large population into their own state. If Republican-voting southern Washington state is included, that’s an additional 0.8 million. > When we created the modern Greater Idaho proposal in 2019, we searched diligently for any possible combination of Washington State counties that would be both as prosperous and as conservative as Idaho. We only find this group of three counties: Columbia, Garfield, and Asotin counties. We are including these counties in our proposal. > Here is a plan for rural WA liberty that is more likely to get approvals than joining Idaho is: https://redstatesecession.org/washington-state-should-become-one-state-consisting-of-two-totally-independent-districts https://redstatesecession.org/washington-state-should-become... https://www.greateridaho.org/faq/ https://www.greateridaho.org/faq/
    - yongjik 5y ago
      Geez, they aren't even hiding that they're gerrymandering for a jumbo Republican state (with the added "benefit" that the remaining OR and CA will become even more Democrat). Exactly what the US needs in 2021. I'm half amused and half horrified.
twobitshifter 5y ago
A town in Vermont voted multiple times to join New Hampshire. It unsurprisingly never happened. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killington,_Vermont_secession_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killington,_Vermont_secessio...
- mattbk1 5y ago
  Good old Act 60.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  The Upper Valley in western NH (where I'm from) also kind of seceded to Vermont for a short while: https://www.flowofhistory.org/the-rebellion-in-western-new-hampshire-and-the-lt-proposed-union-with-vermont-1776-1784/ https://www.flowofhistory.org/the-rebellion-in-western-new-h...
  - ilamont 5y ago
    Another weird border situation played out in the "Oblong" where a botched Colonial land survey created a kind of no-man's land between New York State, Connecticut, and the southwest corner of Massachusetts. How it got resolved related to an utterly bizarre incident in the 1850s. https://anchor.fm/lostmass/episodes/The-Lost-Corner-AKA-Hells-Acre--The-Oblong--Etc--E14-eonb5p https://anchor.fm/lostmass/episodes/The-Lost-Corner-AKA-Hell...
    - asdff 5y ago
      Michigan and Ohio once went to war over Toledo.
      - kfprt 5y ago
        Each tried to make the other take it....
      - christophilus 5y ago
        Little known fact: the bullet holes from that skirmish is where we get the phrase “Holy Toledo”.
ddingus 5y ago
One future pop quiz answer: Tesla city is the capitol of the State of Jefferson.
- razster 5y ago
  I doubt Tesla city, more like Trump city.
  - fnord77 5y ago
    Putin city would be more like it, since the whole split california movement gets pushed hard by russian trolls
    - Alupis 5y ago
      California has some very diverse areas with very diverse people with very diverse needs. I'm not necessarily in favor of splitting California up, but it does make sense to have several smaller states that can better care for the needs of their constituents vs. what we have today where two major cities tend to drive the politics and priorities of the entire state.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  Heh, not a lot of Teslas down there. More like F-150 city.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Totally! I am familiar. Have friends and family in the region. I come to visit them as the tree hugging, bleeding heart, gun toting lefty from lefty central. Always good laughs. Fortunately we have a good culture on politics. No worries. Not everyone does, and I wish it were more true. Can get along just about anywhere really. Wonder if the Ford electric F150 will see rapid adoption in that region? Ford got almost all of it's priorities right. The big screen is a mistake, like delicate work truck type, but maybe the great package overall is not impacted. I will be curious to see that play out.
jerf 5y ago
One of the things I periodically mentally noodle with is, what would the world look like if it was a lot easier for units to choose what larger units they would aggregate into? Like, cities choosing a county, counties choosing a state, states choosing their country, etc. I originally was noodling with this in the context of a space civilization, where there is no equivalent of "solid ground", everything's always moving, and everything can move (i.e., even a "space station" can still move places, it just may be slower than a "space ship"), where these sorts of structures are probably inevitable because at the unit of 'space station' you can't hardly stop them from moving around between what various borders there may be. But you can still noodle with the idea on planet Earth, too. Obviously, our current systems have a lot of institutional inertia in the direction of centralization; for instance, the various impacts this will have on the United States due to how we choose representatives, etc. But you can imagine a world in which this gradually becomes more popular, and imagine what the follow-on effects may be. And also consider why it not how things work here. There have also been times and places in history where things did work more like this, such as when and where "city states" were the dominant organizations rather than "nations". (I present this as an interesting thought topic, not as the solution to the world's problems. I think one thing you will rapidly notice if you put serious thought into it is that especially on Earth, the nature of militaries has a lot of impact on why we find it advantageous to bundle into larger collectives than our neighbors. But I do find myself wondering whether over the next century or so we could save ourselves quite a few shooting wars if we were all more willing to break up amicably instead of fighting to the death over who gets to control tho overly-large, bloated collectives. Alas... we almost certainly won't.) (Another example... in the space case, your choice of governance might actually manifest as concretely as the operating system your space ship or space station runs on, with its corresponding grants of permission or lack thereof to whatever higher powers your choice of governance has. And then that raises a whole bunch of further interesting possibilities.... on Earth though I would expect geography to still loom large on all discussions of sovereignty, though.)
- abnry 5y ago
  I wonder if what you have in mind is like what Germany was before it was unified. Lots of city states that essentially ally together or don't. I don't think it is a stable situation once someone gains the means to conquer by force.
blakesterz 5y ago
The URL of this story is interesting: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/05/19/Oregon-Idaho-Donald-Trump-Joe-Biden/3341621450876/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/05/19/Oregon-Idaho-Dona... I assume the "Oregon-Idaho-Donald-Trump-Joe-Biden" is some SEO thing? It doesn't seem all that central to the story.
- joekim 5y ago
  Trump is a central facet of the story because those counties wanting to join Idaho favored Trump in the election.
- lmkg 5y ago
  The most innocuous explanation is that the URL was automatically generated from the headline, and then the headline was later changed but the URL was not. I've seen that situation happen on multiple news websites. Most commonly as new information is added to an existing website, but sometimes the headline will simply get changed over the course of the day as the article is promoted from the middle of the page, up to the top, back down to the bottom.
- nkozyra 5y ago
  It strikes me as though it's just jamming tags together to build a slug. This was once really useful for SEO but is less so in 2021.
mjevans 5y ago
Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work. The GAO and similar offices should do a better job of preparing reports on where every collected tax dollar is being spent; both in the physical sense as well as in the sourced income sense. A citizen should be able to approach this from either the government side (pick a city or unincorporated area) or enter their zipcode and approximate income and see where the money is flowing from and to. Of particular interest would be trying to categorize areas with positive or negative contributions to a person's or region's productivity. Investments in infrastructure, such as education or for transport (of various things), should also be given special categorization as they are some combination of a shared burden and long term payoff. Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive. My personal believe is presently, for lack of data that I can digest, that the far right is probably focused around emotions. # Possibly religious, in that some interpretation of ancient values systems drives them to desire a simple world in which those are imposed upon others? # Possibly anarchist, in the sense of some romantic fantasy of self reliance (minimal government) and true grit; while forgetting or being ignorant of how society and government provide benefits (E.G. civil services such as fire, medical, and security aid). # Possibly just believing the lies of people that say things they want to hear. Or maybe the driving force is something different entirely that I haven't realized because it's just so obvious to someone that believes in it that it doesn't get said. Offhand I don't think it's likely to be religiously based, and if it's charismatic attraction based I'm not sure what siren song is luring the voters. I wonder if the interactive report on government spending and tax effectiveness might help find a common ground, or at least salient points to discuss for those who don't understand the benefits of buying in bulk and enriching the commons.
- jpttsn 5y ago
  What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong? Let alone the difficulty of tracing it: assume it’s possible to show where every tax dollar went. Would you still favor this trnsparency if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents? Just hypothetically?
tastyfreeze 5y ago
My first reaction was that this is against Article IV Section III of the Constitution. But, reading it again shifting borders of existing states doesn't seem to be prohibited. It would be interesting to see how something like this actually played out.
- buerkle 5y ago
  There is precedence. Maine broke off from Massachusetts in the early 1800s and West Virginia from Virginia at the start of the Civil War.
  - tastyfreeze 5y ago
    Splitting states is specifically addressed in the section. It just takes a vote of the involve state legislatures and Congress. Moving counties from one state to another doesn't require Congress be involved as no state is created or destroyed. I assume that legislatures of both states would need to agree to the border change but it isn't something that is addressed.
marricks 5y ago
As an left Oregonian I think this would be a win-win. Oregon is an extremely liberal state in the valley but outside of metropolitan areas, obviously not. Our state legislature is regularly shut down and forced to cater to far right views. Like, these conservative congressman refuse to show up and literally shut it down so nothing gets done. Liberal congresspeople in general not willing to do anything besides chastise them for it. So the whole legislature doesn't get big progressives projects done as much as they might otherwise. I imagine the biggest impediment to the counties leaving is the centrist portion of our legislature not wanting to give up the bargaining power having right winger congresspeople shut things down. They want their conservative great state with Idaho, go for it. I sincerely hope Idaho can provide as much needed relief for disaster and public funding for fires and such. We do that now but I have to imagine Idaho has a lot less money.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Yes I absolutely agree. An to anyone worried about the electoral college and senate, well, those are salvageably crap, and stuff like this will put on pressure for reform or at last "heighten the contradictions". Even more simply, here's a wonderful grand bargain: DC statehood return for California, Oregon, and Washington boundary shifting. I would take that in a heartbeat. (PR statehood could sweeten the deal, but leftism says PR ought to be independent, and plain non-ideological pro-democracy me says PR should have a binding statehood vs independent referendum that isn't subject to boycotts to determine what Puerto Ricans actually want.)
- refurb 5y ago
  So the whole legislature doesn't get big progressives projects done as much as they might otherwise. But that’s how it’s supposed to work? If only a portion of your electorate supports progressive projects then it’s not supposed to be easy to pass them. Your statement is really bizarre.
  - marricks 5y ago
    Let me give an example, say you you have 61% of the senators so you have a supermajority and can anything you want passed. Ok that's fine. Well says there's a quorum where 70% of senators must be present for a vote. The very minority party now can just leave and stop anything from happening. That's effectively what the republican did. You can call it a fair democracy because it's "following the rules" but it's pretty fucked IMO.
specialist 5y ago
Those voters will be surprised by Idaho's tax burden. Higher than OR and WA, closer to national norms. Very reasonable. I've been pitching the idea of an astroturf (fake) tax revolt campaign in Eastern WA, demanding the commies in Olympia adopt a proper conservative tax regime like Idaho's. IIRC, WA State's yearly tax revenue would then be $3b greater.
- danaris 5y ago
  They'll be surprised first by the fact that they can't actually do this on their own—AIUI, it would require Congressional intervention to reassign land from one state to another.
redleggedfrog 5y ago
Sour grapes. It the opposite side of the liberals threatening to move to Canada when W or King Oompa Loompa got elected. Just another example of American polarization and unwillingness to see the other guys point of view. They'll keep f*cking up the country with their stubbornness until they get old and die, which fortunately, is fairly near term for the right wingers. Sadly, they'll be replaced by a legion of young people doing the same thing for the left.
HDMI_Cable 5y ago
What’s the likeliness of this happening? The greateridaho.org website says this has happened before, but at a smaller degree. Is this legal, or just symbolic?
- justinlink 5y ago
  Not very likely to happen. Would take a lot of votes where they would be in the minority to go there way. Borders between states do change on small scales. Since the 1940's: 1950: Kansas and Missouri exchanged land along the Missouri River due to flooding in 1944. 1961: 20 acres of land was transferred from Minnesota to North Dakota 1977: Texas and Mexico exchanged some parcels of land. 1998: Supreme Court gave part of Ellis Island to New Jersey 2017: North Carolina and South Carolina moved about 19 homes across state lines. Honestly the formation of West Virginia comes to mind as a similar situation where they had political disputes, had a bill of secession, and just generally felt they were not represented and outnumbered by the government to the east of the Appalachian mountains. They weren't able to succeed until the Civil War broke out and they stayed with the Union.
  - HDMI_Cable 5y ago
    Huh, thanks. Even though it’s a long shot, it seems really interesting.
omegaworks 5y ago
The Greater Idaho project would absorb nearly the entire water resources of the East Cascades, placing them under the control of a single state entity. Doesn't bode well for a Western US that will be increasingly dependent on freshwater as the Earth warms.
- Pfhreak 5y ago
  The coastal cities would have access to the major international ports. I suspect the states would have to get along or everyone loses.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    Research suggests about 25-30% of people are willing to suffer a disadvantage if it will result in someone else suffering a great one. So this isn't an reliable as incentive as most economists imagine. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451
kingsuper20 5y ago
I do have to wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just move state functions, as many as are practical, to the county level. Counties are perfectly capable of being 100% in charge of their own schools, roads, police. They largely are, but subject to a great deal of probably unnecessary state control.
- pii 5y ago
  I think we might end up with counties mandating the teaching of some pretty abhorrent things if we did that
  - jdminhbg 5y ago
    School systems are already run at a sub-county level, and depending on your politics you can pick which things being taught are abhorrent.
  - devmunchies 5y ago
    I agree. I have to move back to the bay area and am scared to death about what they are teaching children there. We'll probably homeschool. I couldn't imagine how much worse it would be if they had their own school system.
- jfengel 5y ago
  That sounds to me like it would create a ton of redundancy, as different organizations reimplement nearly-identical policies. And then it creates a ton of uncertainty. A different thread was already complaining about the uncertainty of whether children can inherit debts from their parents, which varies from state to state. Is it really a boon to have it vary county by county? "Simpler" would generally be to centralize what can be centralized. Put all your eggs in one basket, and then make sure it's a really good basket. That's not always the best policy, but if you're looking for the simplest policy, it's usually Don't Repeat Yourself.
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    The natural endgame for that is to place all governmental function at the federal level.
cwbrandsma 5y ago
I'll take "things that will never happen" for 500 Alex.
not2b 5y ago
The US constitution requires that, for this to happen, Congress, the Oregon legislature, and the Idaho legislature must all agree. There's no provision that it is a matter that local country residents get to decide.
- catgary 5y ago
  Would Oregon necessarily be against this? This seems like a great way to (a) get rid of nut jobs from the state legislature, and (b) get rid of a bunch of counties that sinkholes (financially speaking).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nxc18 5y ago
    You’re being downvoted, but living in Oregon I don’t really see the problem. I’m not really attached to borders and I’m trying to understand why other people are. It is an aspect of political science I’d like to know more about if people have useful sources.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      It's pretty messy and would need to have some constitutional support drawn up. E.g. you probably wouldn't do it by county per se, it might be better to make it work by congressional district.
      - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
        County borders make much more sense. Congressional district boundaries change much more often. They also mean nothing to people in terms of their geographic identity. No one says, "Oh yeah, I live over in the 13th District."
        rootusrootus 5y ago
yesBoot 5y ago
What’s great is all these exceptional, gritty people will put the work and expectations on everyone instead of simply moving to Idaho themselves.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  What if they are the majority?
  - nscalf 5y ago
    Then they would probably be winning elections on the state level instead of trying to redefine what the state is.
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      The person you were responding to in all likelihood meant majority of the rural / eastern part of the state not the entire state,
      - yesBoot 5y ago
        It does not matter. They have no power in our system to simply upend norms as they choose. They can pack up and move themselves if they don’t like it. The onus is not on everyone else to cater to them. It’s to abide laws as they are written within our constitutional system of elections and statutes overseeing them. I’m not saying that’s ideal. I’m saying that’s how it works. Down votes do nothing to make it any less true. If these folks would like to change that, I’m sure blue urban areas and states would love to renegotiate their wealth being extracted to fund rural communities. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700 https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the... Ironically, Idaho is a bigger grifter on Federal welfare than Oregon. So they want a more conservative way of life? Which appears to mean “more welfare for me”. If they dig into the history a bit they’d learn rural life was subsidized to begin with, with the government paying business to move out of urban areas. Using government to change the rules for all is not “little government”. Upending state borders out of spite is hardly a “conservative” solution. Their entire platform is laughable given the reality.
erehweb 5y ago
If this did happen, what would be impact on EC votes and House seats?
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  It will not happen; these are votes for show. Counties do not have the legal authority to jump from state to state.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  Probably minimal. The amount of population moving would be tiny. More significant is the natural resources that the population coinhabits the land with.
encryptluks2 5y ago
I don't see how this would be different than states trying to succeed from the US so it likely will just never happen because they don't even have the right in the state constitution.
iwasakabukiman 5y ago
This article title is grossly misleading. As far as I can tell from the article, no actual votes have happened. The group behind this is just pushing for counties to support them. These types of groups pop up all the time, make hay and then disappear.
- orik 5y ago
  There were votes, two more counties will hold a vote at a later date. https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=139 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=139 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=124 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=124 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=141 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=141 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=248 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=248 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=242 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=242
  - dawnerd 5y ago
    Still misleading, they voted to look into it. It's a HUGE waste of money since it wont go anywhere in congress.
    - SllX 5y ago
      If they’re not creating a new State but joining an existing one, it just might. Depends on how this plays out in Oregon and Idaho too, but it won’t affect the Senate.
- la6471 5y ago
  Yes they can vote to leave the state but they should also not get any of the tax dollars from the more densely populated counties that stay behind. Thank you , Sayonara!
- everybodyknows 5y ago
  The vote was taken Tuesday of this week: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/554332-oregon-counties-vote-to-secede-to-idaho https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/554332-oregon-count...
LatteLazy 5y ago
Idaho votes republican right? And Oregon is a swing state? So moving 5 republican counties from the later to the former would be a good move for anyone opposed to Trump 2024... As an old style Liberal, it's nice to be able to have my cake and eat it, though I'm not actually American so...
- jessaustin 5y ago
  The last Republican who won Oregon was Ronald Reagan. Although, to your point, LBJ was the last Democrat who won Idaho.
casefields 5y ago
Much better article here: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-counties-vote-to-move-into-idaho-part-of-rural-effort-to-to-gain-political-refuge-from-blue-states.html https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-coun...
chasd00 5y ago
can a state hold on to a county by force? Send in state troopers, sack the existing county level leadership and replace it? Seems like states would have that in their constitutions.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reilly3000 5y ago
Mods: please consider changing the title to: Five Oregon counties vote to discuss joining 'Greater Idaho'
trhway 5y ago
Puerto-Rico can't get statehood while others get to choose which state they feel more comfortable to belong to ... Who said that the life is just?
chrononaut 5y ago
Relevant interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_p...
tppiotrowski 5y ago
Grant voted 1,471 to 895 for county officials “to meet and discuss relocating Idaho border.” Lake voted 1,341 to 463 for the “relocation of Idaho border” to be taken up in “county board of commissioners meetings.” Malheur voted 3,050 to 2,572 for “county court meetings regarding relocation of Oregon-Idaho border.” Sherman voted 429 to 260 in favor of “promoting moving Oregon-Idaho border.” Baker voted 3,064 to 2,307 for county commissioners “to meet three times per year to discuss a proposal to include 18 counties, including Baker, as part of Idaho,” the Baker City Herald reported. Baker County results are not yet available from the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. Seems like this vote was to start "meetings" and "discussions" [1]. No one is leaving the state yet. [1] https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-counties-vote-to-move-into-idaho-part-of-rural-effort-to-to-gain-political-refuge-from-blue-states.html https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-coun...
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  There’s also the question of whether or not Idaho would actually want to take them.
  - cronix 5y ago
    I've read that they are interested. It would extend Idaho to the Pacific Ocean and give them a seaport in Coos Bay, if certain adjoining counties in the proposal join.
    - a3n 5y ago
      Idaho has a "seaport" already, in Lewiston (across the border from Clarkston WA). You get there by way of the Columbia River and locks. I often haul giant rolls of paper in my semi from the papermill in Lewiston.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Also by way of the Snake river (which gets to the Columbia just before the tri cities). The snake river goes all the Jackson hole, but isn’t navigable for most of that (well, those parts are very good for white water rafting).
every 5y ago
Fine. Let them all congregate into a single state with only two senators. That will simplify things a bit...
legitster 5y ago
I think it's interesting that the actual proposal is RIFE with some really, really bad analysis: https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Greater-Idaho-Proposal-r21.pdf https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Grea... The best example is how they treat averages: As part of their "win-win" scenario: the new average income for the state of Oregon would rise. As if individuals would actually directly benefit from the average arbitrarily going up. Inversely, one of the benefits of joining Idaho is the lower cost of living vs Oregon, disproportionally averaging the PDX metro area as their own cost of living. However, the whole thing is chock full of the assumption that everyone would be happier and better off if elections were less competitive. It's such a weird document in that the group is effectively arguing to gerrymander themselves into a less electorally relevant position.
- nverno 5y ago
  I get the feeling the people behind the proposal aren't doing it for political gain. It sounds like they are fully resigned to their group's lack of political power in the region, and just want some respite. Less competitive elections sound great to me. That would imply that whoever won would have good majority support and maybe politics would fade into the background where it belongs.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Like in Russia or China?
    - nverno 5y ago
      How about just like an Eisenhower or Kennedy or Mandela? Competition isn't a good sign in politics, it just means people havent reached a good consensus.
      - legitster 5y ago
        The difference with Eisenhower and Kennedy is that they were elected in eras when people were much more likely to switch their votes between parties - on average elections we were much more competitive.
gonational 5y ago
I think this is great. I think urban places that believe in communism are perfectly within their right to exercise that kind of self-abuse, and the surrounding rural areas should not have to participate. According to these urban centers, the rural areas are just an economic drain anyway, so it behooves them to get rid of their lowly rural neighbors and become the urban superpowers they were destined to become !
anigbrowl 5y ago
Some necessary context on any discussion of this issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territorial_Imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territorial_Imperati... Ideological separatism in that part of the country is A Thing.
siculars 5y ago
Couldn't they vote with their feet by selling Oregon and buying Idaho?
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
I'll predict these counties are largely GOP. This will open up precedent for urban areas to secede from their states and declare themselves states. The GOP maintains power via the senate's disproportionate empowering of rural states. Before anyone says that the senate is intended to represent land, just realize that almost all of this "representation of land" is done via white senators. If democratic urban areas declared themselves states, gaining senators to represent themselves (and depriving the rural areas of the economic vitality of the cities, then the GOP would be finished.
belatw 5y ago
Seems like the GOP is kicking gerrymandering into overdrive. They’re clearly emboldened by the number of congressional districts they gained thanks to the latest census happening during their reign.
jl2718 5y ago
Everybody here seems to be an expert in what is best for these people, and why their votes are stupid and wrong, and shouldn’t matter.

271 points by rmason 5y ago

Tempest1981 5y ago

How is the 6-Californians proposal going, I wonder? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias

Nicksil 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias
- Tempest1981 5y ago
  Thanks, fixed the mobile link
thehappypm 5y ago
I love how gerrymandered these proposals are. Make sure that the Bay Area is split across two states, so that both stay blue.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  The person who sponsored the 6 californias proposal was fairly conservative / capitalistic. I doubt he was attempting to create more states that leaned toward Democrats. Also have you ever been to Marin? A lot of people there are fairly "conservative".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jandrese 5y ago
  The even more crazy part is the proposed Jefferson has less than 1/10 the population of West or South California but still has a higher population than both Dakotas, Washington DC, Alaska, Vermont, or Wyoming. West California would still be one of the most populous states in the union, coming in just behind Ohio in 7th place and South California would be nipping on its heels. Silicon Valley would be ranked near Tennessee. As crazy as this proposal sounds, it's probably less crazy than having almost 40 million people be represented by just 2 senators when Wyoming has the same number of senators for barely half a million people.
  - sharkmerry 5y ago
    > it's probably less crazy than having almost 40 million people be represented by just 2 senators when Wyoming has the same number of senators for barely half a million people. This was purposely the design of the Senate. This complaint should be more applied to the House, where we stopped increasing the number of reps as population grew
    - CameronNemo 5y ago
      The Senate was designed by crazy people.
    - jandrese 5y ago
      I don’t think the founding fathers really understood how much the population of the states would diverge over the years.
      - _delirium 5y ago
        I didn't have a good offhand feel for how the ratio of large to small state populations has changed, so for whatever it's worth, the ratio between the largest and smallest state at various times: 1790: 12x (Virginia : Delaware) 1850: 36x (New York : Florida) 1900: 173x (New York : Nevada) 1950: 93x (New York : Nevada) 2000: 69x (California : Wyoming) 2020: 68x (California : Wyoming)
      - crocodiletears 5y ago
        Iirc, the least populous states in the union were about 7% (~1.5% of the national population) the population of the most populous (Virginia). Within 30 years of the constitution's ratification, Indiana was granted statehood with a population equivalent to .8% of the national population. It's a far cry from Wyoming being ~1% the population of California (~.17% of the US pop), but I think they and the first few generations of american politicians were reasonably aware of the potential spread.
- klipt 5y ago
  You know we could solve gerrymandering entirely by using proportional representation like many other democracies do.

pcan77 5y ago

Why not just move to Idaho then? Or some other red state?

dharmab 5y ago
In order to create 2 new Senate seats.
- cronix 5y ago
  Changing the border wouldn't change senate seats. Oregon would still get 2 senators, and Idaho will still have 2 just like all other states. A new 51st state isn't being created. Representatives would change a bit though since they are population based.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throwkeep 5y ago
Guessing they like some combination of geography, neighborhood, house, job where they live?
- cronix 5y ago
  Most are farmers who have been working the same land for generations. They know it inside and out under all sorts of conditions. It's kind of trivial to move a household vs an entire farm system. It can take several years to get it all up and running again, depending on your crop/animals of course. There is no political back and forth like there used to be where you'd have republicans controlling things for a time and then democrats. It's been mostly Portland democrats controlling the state for over 20 years now. The needs of most of the state, by geography but which has a lower population, are not the same as those in the 1 big city the state has, so a lot of people are interested in changing that with democratic votes. Since Portland pays the lionshare of taxes for the state, you'd think they'd be happy getting rid of the poorer parts of the states that they have to currently subsidize. Seems like it would be a win-win for everybody involved. What are the downsides? If you look at the state senate map, there is a lot more red land mass than blue. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oregon_Senate_map.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oregon_Senate_map.pn...

UncleOxidant 5y ago

As an Oregonian not living in one of those sparsely-populated counties that voted for secession, I wonder why the folks who want to be part of Idaho don't just vote with their feet and move there? There's no border wall keeping them in Oregon. These votes are just symbolic and won't get them to their Idaho paradise near as quickly as a U-Haul could.

bombcar 5y ago
Because voting is easy and moving is hard.
dumbfoundded 5y ago
The whole point of democracy is to vote to change things you don't like about your government. I don't agree with them but I respect their right to vote on it. I wouldn't respect or legitimize a violent insurrection.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  Yeah, but it's not like this vote is going to accomplish anything. It's just symbolic. If they really want to live under a more conservative government, well, there's one right there to the east.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  >I wouldn't respect or legitimize a violent insurrection. You know that's how the US was formed, right?
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Sure, but the future can be better than the past. It would be wonderful for humans if the process of changing sovereignty were normally non-violent.

dumbfoundded 5y ago

For reference, this is about 100K people of 4.2M in Oregon (1). The rural counties of Southern Oregon and Northern California have been proposing the state of Jefferson for a while now (2). From my experience living there for a few years, it's the most libertarian place I've ever seen. It's like Texas without the Christianity. People there generally support gay marriage, abortion, and cannabis legalization but also low taxes, no gun restrictions and limited government. (1) https://www.oregon-demographics.com/counties_by_population https://www.oregon-demographics.com/counties_by_population (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...

UncleOxidant 5y ago
It varies a lot. I spent some growing up years in Southern Oregon and there definitely was a strong evangelical, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion etc. contingent in the town where I was. Lots of Birchers & KKK types as well. This was in the 70s and while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically shocking, it seems like we had a lot of similar kinds of conspiracies running rampant in small southern Oregon towns back then as well. My dad was a science teacher so we felt pretty much like an island of progressivism in a sea of very right wing folk. More than once I recall him shaking his head and muttering something like "These people are nuts!" after an exchange with a local that went off the rails into conspiracy land.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  >while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically shocking only if you have forgotten, as you say, the great satanic panic(s) of the 70s and 80s. And, every few decades, going back to about Carthage... https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-panic-returns-this-time-through-qanon https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-pa...
- dumbfoundded 5y ago
  I recently moved from Eagle Point so probably not too far away from where you were. It's certainly a strange and diverse set of people. Everything from weed growers to hippies to evangelicals to conspiracy nuts and everything in between. Most of the people I met there generally distrusted the government and couldn't care less about what you did on your own land.

Tempest1981 5y ago

Doesn't Eastern Washington also have a similar demographic? Maybe combine them too.

standardUser 5y ago
Here is a proposal from greateridaho.org: https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Greater-Idaho-Proposal-r21.pdf https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Grea... It includes chunks of OR and CA but not WA for some reason. It may be explained in the doc.
- philwelch 5y ago
  It’s explained in their FAQ: > Idahoans are very concerned about keeping their state as conservative as possible. They had 2.46 conservative votes per liberal vote in the 2016 presidential election, but eastern Washington only had 1.43. > Moreover, eastern Washington has a population of 1.6 million in 2017, as compared to Idaho’s population of 1.7 million. Idahoans don’t want to be outvoted by others in their own state, so they’re not likely to want to include such a large population into their own state. If Republican-voting southern Washington state is included, that’s an additional 0.8 million. > When we created the modern Greater Idaho proposal in 2019, we searched diligently for any possible combination of Washington State counties that would be both as prosperous and as conservative as Idaho. We only find this group of three counties: Columbia, Garfield, and Asotin counties. We are including these counties in our proposal. > Here is a plan for rural WA liberty that is more likely to get approvals than joining Idaho is: https://redstatesecession.org/washington-state-should-become-one-state-consisting-of-two-totally-independent-districts https://redstatesecession.org/washington-state-should-become... https://www.greateridaho.org/faq/ https://www.greateridaho.org/faq/
  - yongjik 5y ago
    Geez, they aren't even hiding that they're gerrymandering for a jumbo Republican state (with the added "benefit" that the remaining OR and CA will become even more Democrat). Exactly what the US needs in 2021. I'm half amused and half horrified.

twobitshifter 5y ago

A town in Vermont voted multiple times to join New Hampshire. It unsurprisingly never happened. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killington,_Vermont_secession_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killington,_Vermont_secessio...

mattbk1 5y ago
Good old Act 60.
akvadrako 5y ago
The Upper Valley in western NH (where I'm from) also kind of seceded to Vermont for a short while: https://www.flowofhistory.org/the-rebellion-in-western-new-hampshire-and-the-lt-proposed-union-with-vermont-1776-1784/ https://www.flowofhistory.org/the-rebellion-in-western-new-h...
- ilamont 5y ago
  Another weird border situation played out in the "Oblong" where a botched Colonial land survey created a kind of no-man's land between New York State, Connecticut, and the southwest corner of Massachusetts. How it got resolved related to an utterly bizarre incident in the 1850s. https://anchor.fm/lostmass/episodes/The-Lost-Corner-AKA-Hells-Acre--The-Oblong--Etc--E14-eonb5p https://anchor.fm/lostmass/episodes/The-Lost-Corner-AKA-Hell...
  - asdff 5y ago
    Michigan and Ohio once went to war over Toledo.
    - kfprt 5y ago
      Each tried to make the other take it....
    - christophilus 5y ago
      Little known fact: the bullet holes from that skirmish is where we get the phrase “Holy Toledo”.

ddingus 5y ago

One future pop quiz answer: Tesla city is the capitol of the State of Jefferson.

razster 5y ago
I doubt Tesla city, more like Trump city.
- fnord77 5y ago
  Putin city would be more like it, since the whole split california movement gets pushed hard by russian trolls
  - Alupis 5y ago
    California has some very diverse areas with very diverse people with very diverse needs. I'm not necessarily in favor of splitting California up, but it does make sense to have several smaller states that can better care for the needs of their constituents vs. what we have today where two major cities tend to drive the politics and priorities of the entire state.
UncleOxidant 5y ago
Heh, not a lot of Teslas down there. More like F-150 city.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Totally! I am familiar. Have friends and family in the region. I come to visit them as the tree hugging, bleeding heart, gun toting lefty from lefty central. Always good laughs. Fortunately we have a good culture on politics. No worries. Not everyone does, and I wish it were more true. Can get along just about anywhere really. Wonder if the Ford electric F150 will see rapid adoption in that region? Ford got almost all of it's priorities right. The big screen is a mistake, like delicate work truck type, but maybe the great package overall is not impacted. I will be curious to see that play out.

jerf 5y ago

One of the things I periodically mentally noodle with is, what would the world look like if it was a lot easier for units to choose what larger units they would aggregate into? Like, cities choosing a county, counties choosing a state, states choosing their country, etc. I originally was noodling with this in the context of a space civilization, where there is no equivalent of "solid ground", everything's always moving, and everything can move (i.e., even a "space station" can still move places, it just may be slower than a "space ship"), where these sorts of structures are probably inevitable because at the unit of 'space station' you can't hardly stop them from moving around between what various borders there may be. But you can still noodle with the idea on planet Earth, too. Obviously, our current systems have a lot of institutional inertia in the direction of centralization; for instance, the various impacts this will have on the United States due to how we choose representatives, etc. But you can imagine a world in which this gradually becomes more popular, and imagine what the follow-on effects may be. And also consider why it not how things work here. There have also been times and places in history where things did work more like this, such as when and where "city states" were the dominant organizations rather than "nations". (I present this as an interesting thought topic, not as the solution to the world's problems. I think one thing you will rapidly notice if you put serious thought into it is that especially on Earth, the nature of militaries has a lot of impact on why we find it advantageous to bundle into larger collectives than our neighbors. But I do find myself wondering whether over the next century or so we could save ourselves quite a few shooting wars if we were all more willing to break up amicably instead of fighting to the death over who gets to control tho overly-large, bloated collectives. Alas... we almost certainly won't.) (Another example... in the space case, your choice of governance might actually manifest as concretely as the operating system your space ship or space station runs on, with its corresponding grants of permission or lack thereof to whatever higher powers your choice of governance has. And then that raises a whole bunch of further interesting possibilities.... on Earth though I would expect geography to still loom large on all discussions of sovereignty, though.)

abnry 5y ago
I wonder if what you have in mind is like what Germany was before it was unified. Lots of city states that essentially ally together or don't. I don't think it is a stable situation once someone gains the means to conquer by force.

blakesterz 5y ago

The URL of this story is interesting: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/05/19/Oregon-Idaho-Donald-Trump-Joe-Biden/3341621450876/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/05/19/Oregon-Idaho-Dona... I assume the "Oregon-Idaho-Donald-Trump-Joe-Biden" is some SEO thing? It doesn't seem all that central to the story.

joekim 5y ago
Trump is a central facet of the story because those counties wanting to join Idaho favored Trump in the election.
lmkg 5y ago
The most innocuous explanation is that the URL was automatically generated from the headline, and then the headline was later changed but the URL was not. I've seen that situation happen on multiple news websites. Most commonly as new information is added to an existing website, but sometimes the headline will simply get changed over the course of the day as the article is promoted from the middle of the page, up to the top, back down to the bottom.
nkozyra 5y ago
It strikes me as though it's just jamming tags together to build a slug. This was once really useful for SEO but is less so in 2021.

mjevans 5y ago

Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work. The GAO and similar offices should do a better job of preparing reports on where every collected tax dollar is being spent; both in the physical sense as well as in the sourced income sense. A citizen should be able to approach this from either the government side (pick a city or unincorporated area) or enter their zipcode and approximate income and see where the money is flowing from and to. Of particular interest would be trying to categorize areas with positive or negative contributions to a person's or region's productivity. Investments in infrastructure, such as education or for transport (of various things), should also be given special categorization as they are some combination of a shared burden and long term payoff. Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive. My personal believe is presently, for lack of data that I can digest, that the far right is probably focused around emotions. # Possibly religious, in that some interpretation of ancient values systems drives them to desire a simple world in which those are imposed upon others? # Possibly anarchist, in the sense of some romantic fantasy of self reliance (minimal government) and true grit; while forgetting or being ignorant of how society and government provide benefits (E.G. civil services such as fire, medical, and security aid). # Possibly just believing the lies of people that say things they want to hear. Or maybe the driving force is something different entirely that I haven't realized because it's just so obvious to someone that believes in it that it doesn't get said. Offhand I don't think it's likely to be religiously based, and if it's charismatic attraction based I'm not sure what siren song is luring the voters. I wonder if the interactive report on government spending and tax effectiveness might help find a common ground, or at least salient points to discuss for those who don't understand the benefits of buying in bulk and enriching the commons.

jpttsn 5y ago
What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong? Let alone the difficulty of tracing it: assume it’s possible to show where every tax dollar went. Would you still favor this trnsparency if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents? Just hypothetically?

tastyfreeze 5y ago

My first reaction was that this is against Article IV Section III of the Constitution. But, reading it again shifting borders of existing states doesn't seem to be prohibited. It would be interesting to see how something like this actually played out.

buerkle 5y ago
There is precedence. Maine broke off from Massachusetts in the early 1800s and West Virginia from Virginia at the start of the Civil War.
- tastyfreeze 5y ago
  Splitting states is specifically addressed in the section. It just takes a vote of the involve state legislatures and Congress. Moving counties from one state to another doesn't require Congress be involved as no state is created or destroyed. I assume that legislatures of both states would need to agree to the border change but it isn't something that is addressed.

marricks 5y ago

As an left Oregonian I think this would be a win-win. Oregon is an extremely liberal state in the valley but outside of metropolitan areas, obviously not. Our state legislature is regularly shut down and forced to cater to far right views. Like, these conservative congressman refuse to show up and literally shut it down so nothing gets done. Liberal congresspeople in general not willing to do anything besides chastise them for it. So the whole legislature doesn't get big progressives projects done as much as they might otherwise. I imagine the biggest impediment to the counties leaving is the centrist portion of our legislature not wanting to give up the bargaining power having right winger congresspeople shut things down. They want their conservative great state with Idaho, go for it. I sincerely hope Idaho can provide as much needed relief for disaster and public funding for fires and such. We do that now but I have to imagine Idaho has a lot less money.

Ericson2314 5y ago
Yes I absolutely agree. An to anyone worried about the electoral college and senate, well, those are salvageably crap, and stuff like this will put on pressure for reform or at last "heighten the contradictions". Even more simply, here's a wonderful grand bargain: DC statehood return for California, Oregon, and Washington boundary shifting. I would take that in a heartbeat. (PR statehood could sweeten the deal, but leftism says PR ought to be independent, and plain non-ideological pro-democracy me says PR should have a binding statehood vs independent referendum that isn't subject to boycotts to determine what Puerto Ricans actually want.)
refurb 5y ago
So the whole legislature doesn't get big progressives projects done as much as they might otherwise. But that’s how it’s supposed to work? If only a portion of your electorate supports progressive projects then it’s not supposed to be easy to pass them. Your statement is really bizarre.
- marricks 5y ago
  Let me give an example, say you you have 61% of the senators so you have a supermajority and can anything you want passed. Ok that's fine. Well says there's a quorum where 70% of senators must be present for a vote. The very minority party now can just leave and stop anything from happening. That's effectively what the republican did. You can call it a fair democracy because it's "following the rules" but it's pretty fucked IMO.

specialist 5y ago

Those voters will be surprised by Idaho's tax burden. Higher than OR and WA, closer to national norms. Very reasonable. I've been pitching the idea of an astroturf (fake) tax revolt campaign in Eastern WA, demanding the commies in Olympia adopt a proper conservative tax regime like Idaho's. IIRC, WA State's yearly tax revenue would then be $3b greater.

danaris 5y ago
They'll be surprised first by the fact that they can't actually do this on their own—AIUI, it would require Congressional intervention to reassign land from one state to another.

redleggedfrog 5y ago

Sour grapes. It the opposite side of the liberals threatening to move to Canada when W or King Oompa Loompa got elected. Just another example of American polarization and unwillingness to see the other guys point of view. They'll keep f*cking up the country with their stubbornness until they get old and die, which fortunately, is fairly near term for the right wingers. Sadly, they'll be replaced by a legion of young people doing the same thing for the left.

HDMI_Cable 5y ago

What’s the likeliness of this happening? The greateridaho.org website says this has happened before, but at a smaller degree. Is this legal, or just symbolic?

justinlink 5y ago
Not very likely to happen. Would take a lot of votes where they would be in the minority to go there way. Borders between states do change on small scales. Since the 1940's: 1950: Kansas and Missouri exchanged land along the Missouri River due to flooding in 1944. 1961: 20 acres of land was transferred from Minnesota to North Dakota 1977: Texas and Mexico exchanged some parcels of land. 1998: Supreme Court gave part of Ellis Island to New Jersey 2017: North Carolina and South Carolina moved about 19 homes across state lines. Honestly the formation of West Virginia comes to mind as a similar situation where they had political disputes, had a bill of secession, and just generally felt they were not represented and outnumbered by the government to the east of the Appalachian mountains. They weren't able to succeed until the Civil War broke out and they stayed with the Union.
- HDMI_Cable 5y ago
  Huh, thanks. Even though it’s a long shot, it seems really interesting.

omegaworks 5y ago

The Greater Idaho project would absorb nearly the entire water resources of the East Cascades, placing them under the control of a single state entity. Doesn't bode well for a Western US that will be increasingly dependent on freshwater as the Earth warms.

Pfhreak 5y ago
The coastal cities would have access to the major international ports. I suspect the states would have to get along or everyone loses.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Research suggests about 25-30% of people are willing to suffer a disadvantage if it will result in someone else suffering a great one. So this isn't an reliable as incentive as most economists imagine. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451

kingsuper20 5y ago

I do have to wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just move state functions, as many as are practical, to the county level. Counties are perfectly capable of being 100% in charge of their own schools, roads, police. They largely are, but subject to a great deal of probably unnecessary state control.

pii 5y ago
I think we might end up with counties mandating the teaching of some pretty abhorrent things if we did that
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  School systems are already run at a sub-county level, and depending on your politics you can pick which things being taught are abhorrent.
- devmunchies 5y ago
  I agree. I have to move back to the bay area and am scared to death about what they are teaching children there. We'll probably homeschool. I couldn't imagine how much worse it would be if they had their own school system.
jfengel 5y ago
That sounds to me like it would create a ton of redundancy, as different organizations reimplement nearly-identical policies. And then it creates a ton of uncertainty. A different thread was already complaining about the uncertainty of whether children can inherit debts from their parents, which varies from state to state. Is it really a boon to have it vary county by county? "Simpler" would generally be to centralize what can be centralized. Put all your eggs in one basket, and then make sure it's a really good basket. That's not always the best policy, but if you're looking for the simplest policy, it's usually Don't Repeat Yourself.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  The natural endgame for that is to place all governmental function at the federal level.

cwbrandsma 5y ago

I'll take "things that will never happen" for 500 Alex.

not2b 5y ago

The US constitution requires that, for this to happen, Congress, the Oregon legislature, and the Idaho legislature must all agree. There's no provision that it is a matter that local country residents get to decide.

catgary 5y ago
Would Oregon necessarily be against this? This seems like a great way to (a) get rid of nut jobs from the state legislature, and (b) get rid of a bunch of counties that sinkholes (financially speaking).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nxc18 5y ago
  You’re being downvoted, but living in Oregon I don’t really see the problem. I’m not really attached to borders and I’m trying to understand why other people are. It is an aspect of political science I’d like to know more about if people have useful sources.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    It's pretty messy and would need to have some constitutional support drawn up. E.g. you probably wouldn't do it by county per se, it might be better to make it work by congressional district.
    - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
      County borders make much more sense. Congressional district boundaries change much more often. They also mean nothing to people in terms of their geographic identity. No one says, "Oh yeah, I live over in the 13th District."
      - rootusrootus 5y ago

yesBoot 5y ago

What’s great is all these exceptional, gritty people will put the work and expectations on everyone instead of simply moving to Idaho themselves.

lostmsu 5y ago
What if they are the majority?
- nscalf 5y ago
  Then they would probably be winning elections on the state level instead of trying to redefine what the state is.
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    The person you were responding to in all likelihood meant majority of the rural / eastern part of the state not the entire state,
    - yesBoot 5y ago
      It does not matter. They have no power in our system to simply upend norms as they choose. They can pack up and move themselves if they don’t like it. The onus is not on everyone else to cater to them. It’s to abide laws as they are written within our constitutional system of elections and statutes overseeing them. I’m not saying that’s ideal. I’m saying that’s how it works. Down votes do nothing to make it any less true. If these folks would like to change that, I’m sure blue urban areas and states would love to renegotiate their wealth being extracted to fund rural communities. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700 https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the... Ironically, Idaho is a bigger grifter on Federal welfare than Oregon. So they want a more conservative way of life? Which appears to mean “more welfare for me”. If they dig into the history a bit they’d learn rural life was subsidized to begin with, with the government paying business to move out of urban areas. Using government to change the rules for all is not “little government”. Upending state borders out of spite is hardly a “conservative” solution. Their entire platform is laughable given the reality.

erehweb 5y ago

If this did happen, what would be impact on EC votes and House seats?

snowwrestler 5y ago
It will not happen; these are votes for show. Counties do not have the legal authority to jump from state to state.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
CameronNemo 5y ago
Probably minimal. The amount of population moving would be tiny. More significant is the natural resources that the population coinhabits the land with.

encryptluks2 5y ago

I don't see how this would be different than states trying to succeed from the US so it likely will just never happen because they don't even have the right in the state constitution.

iwasakabukiman 5y ago

This article title is grossly misleading. As far as I can tell from the article, no actual votes have happened. The group behind this is just pushing for counties to support them. These types of groups pop up all the time, make hay and then disappear.

orik 5y ago
There were votes, two more counties will hold a vote at a later date. https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=139 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=139 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=124 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=124 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=141 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=141 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=248 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=248 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=242 https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=242
- dawnerd 5y ago
  Still misleading, they voted to look into it. It's a HUGE waste of money since it wont go anywhere in congress.
  - SllX 5y ago
    If they’re not creating a new State but joining an existing one, it just might. Depends on how this plays out in Oregon and Idaho too, but it won’t affect the Senate.
la6471 5y ago
Yes they can vote to leave the state but they should also not get any of the tax dollars from the more densely populated counties that stay behind. Thank you , Sayonara!
everybodyknows 5y ago
The vote was taken Tuesday of this week: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/554332-oregon-counties-vote-to-secede-to-idaho https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/554332-oregon-count...

LatteLazy 5y ago

Idaho votes republican right? And Oregon is a swing state? So moving 5 republican counties from the later to the former would be a good move for anyone opposed to Trump 2024... As an old style Liberal, it's nice to be able to have my cake and eat it, though I'm not actually American so...

jessaustin 5y ago
The last Republican who won Oregon was Ronald Reagan. Although, to your point, LBJ was the last Democrat who won Idaho.

casefields 5y ago

Much better article here: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-counties-vote-to-move-into-idaho-part-of-rural-effort-to-to-gain-political-refuge-from-blue-states.html https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-coun...

chasd00 5y ago

can a state hold on to a county by force? Send in state troopers, sack the existing county level leadership and replace it? Seems like states would have that in their constitutions.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

reilly3000 5y ago

Mods: please consider changing the title to: Five Oregon counties vote to discuss joining 'Greater Idaho'

trhway 5y ago

Puerto-Rico can't get statehood while others get to choose which state they feel more comfortable to belong to ... Who said that the life is just?

chrononaut 5y ago

Relevant interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_p...

tppiotrowski 5y ago

Grant voted 1,471 to 895 for county officials “to meet and discuss relocating Idaho border.” Lake voted 1,341 to 463 for the “relocation of Idaho border” to be taken up in “county board of commissioners meetings.” Malheur voted 3,050 to 2,572 for “county court meetings regarding relocation of Oregon-Idaho border.” Sherman voted 429 to 260 in favor of “promoting moving Oregon-Idaho border.” Baker voted 3,064 to 2,307 for county commissioners “to meet three times per year to discuss a proposal to include 18 counties, including Baker, as part of Idaho,” the Baker City Herald reported. Baker County results are not yet available from the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. Seems like this vote was to start "meetings" and "discussions" [1]. No one is leaving the state yet. [1] https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-counties-vote-to-move-into-idaho-part-of-rural-effort-to-to-gain-political-refuge-from-blue-states.html https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-coun...

bobthepanda 5y ago
There’s also the question of whether or not Idaho would actually want to take them.
- cronix 5y ago
  I've read that they are interested. It would extend Idaho to the Pacific Ocean and give them a seaport in Coos Bay, if certain adjoining counties in the proposal join.
  - a3n 5y ago
    Idaho has a "seaport" already, in Lewiston (across the border from Clarkston WA). You get there by way of the Columbia River and locks. I often haul giant rolls of paper in my semi from the papermill in Lewiston.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Also by way of the Snake river (which gets to the Columbia just before the tri cities). The snake river goes all the Jackson hole, but isn’t navigable for most of that (well, those parts are very good for white water rafting).

every 5y ago

Fine. Let them all congregate into a single state with only two senators. That will simplify things a bit...

legitster 5y ago

I think it's interesting that the actual proposal is RIFE with some really, really bad analysis: https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Greater-Idaho-Proposal-r21.pdf https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Grea... The best example is how they treat averages: As part of their "win-win" scenario: the new average income for the state of Oregon would rise. As if individuals would actually directly benefit from the average arbitrarily going up. Inversely, one of the benefits of joining Idaho is the lower cost of living vs Oregon, disproportionally averaging the PDX metro area as their own cost of living. However, the whole thing is chock full of the assumption that everyone would be happier and better off if elections were less competitive. It's such a weird document in that the group is effectively arguing to gerrymander themselves into a less electorally relevant position.

nverno 5y ago
I get the feeling the people behind the proposal aren't doing it for political gain. It sounds like they are fully resigned to their group's lack of political power in the region, and just want some respite. Less competitive elections sound great to me. That would imply that whoever won would have good majority support and maybe politics would fade into the background where it belongs.
- zepto 5y ago
  Like in Russia or China?
  - nverno 5y ago
    How about just like an Eisenhower or Kennedy or Mandela? Competition isn't a good sign in politics, it just means people havent reached a good consensus.
    - legitster 5y ago
      The difference with Eisenhower and Kennedy is that they were elected in eras when people were much more likely to switch their votes between parties - on average elections we were much more competitive.

gonational 5y ago

I think this is great. I think urban places that believe in communism are perfectly within their right to exercise that kind of self-abuse, and the surrounding rural areas should not have to participate. According to these urban centers, the rural areas are just an economic drain anyway, so it behooves them to get rid of their lowly rural neighbors and become the urban superpowers they were destined to become !

anigbrowl 5y ago

Some necessary context on any discussion of this issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territorial_Imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territorial_Imperati... Ideological separatism in that part of the country is A Thing.

siculars 5y ago

Couldn't they vote with their feet by selling Oregon and buying Idaho?

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

I'll predict these counties are largely GOP. This will open up precedent for urban areas to secede from their states and declare themselves states. The GOP maintains power via the senate's disproportionate empowering of rural states. Before anyone says that the senate is intended to represent land, just realize that almost all of this "representation of land" is done via white senators. If democratic urban areas declared themselves states, gaining senators to represent themselves (and depriving the rural areas of the economic vitality of the cities, then the GOP would be finished.

belatw 5y ago

Seems like the GOP is kicking gerrymandering into overdrive. They’re clearly emboldened by the number of congressional districts they gained thanks to the latest census happening during their reign.

jl2718 5y ago

Everybody here seems to be an expert in what is best for these people, and why their votes are stupid and wrong, and shouldn’t matter.