On Tuesday, voters in Crook County passed measure 7-86, which asked voters if they support negotiations to move the Oregon/Idaho border to include Crook County in Idaho.  The measure is passing with 53% of the vote, and makes Crook County the 13th county in eastern Oregon to pass a Greater Idaho measure.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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    6 months ago

    So I am from WA and have been aware of this plan for a while.

    This is one phase, and the next phase is to try to do this with as many Eastern WA counties as possible.

    And to anyone wondering why this is happening, ya’ll obviously are not from around the PNW.

    Basically, Seattle, Tacoma and Portland are bastion of liberals and actual leftists. Bellevue is as well, but its only for corpos these days.

    Nearly everywhere else west of the cascades is just barely more blue than red, and there are tons of smaller towns with Republican controlled county legislatures and town/city governments.

    On the East of the Cascades, in the desert, basically, Republicans are generally in charge of everything that isn’t a Reservation.

    Its a bit more complex than this, but it is pretty much ‘big cities’ are blue, mid and small cities and everything else is red.

    While I am against this succeeding, I do not think this is as cut and dry, obviously unconstitutional as some other posters here are making it seem.

    It is not creating a new state. It is counties voting to leave one state and join another. To the best of my knowledge, this is completely unprecedented in the history of the US.

    They’ve got a whole detailed plan for how to attempt to get this actually done. And they have a lot of judges, and now a popular mandate.

    I honestly do not know how this will play out as it will likely hinge on various judiciaries and possibly executive (Governor) moves.

    Yes, the state legislatures have to sign off on it and thats a big hurdle to jump, but it may actually be doable if enough political pressure is applied… especially if Trump wins.

    It could possibly make it to the Circuit Courts and then the Supreme Court.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I describe it like this… the places where people actually live are blue.

      The places where there are more square miles than people are red.

        • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It’s not that they’re poorly educated (farmers are typically smart people in very practical ways that city people are not), it’s that they don’t have government services to rely on so they don’t understand why people in the city need it as they see themselves as self sufficient.

    • TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      While true, this is true in basically every area in the USA. If you have a tractor supply store near your house, you’re in redneck territory. If you have a Lululemon, you’re in blue territory.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      Can we merge Idaho with the rest of the Midwest? It’d be pretty fucking sweet to have less GOP senators.

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        They wouldn’t want that if course.

        However, of they do this, then they would likely make an argument for reallocating electors…

        • Xbeam@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It would reallocate electors as well as congressional seats. Those are both based on population and are already realloated every 10 years.

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Ah didn’t bother to look it up, thanks for the clarification.

            Though the congressional seats will be a wash, since I’m sure the existing districts already are red.

    • Neato@ttrpg.network
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      6 months ago

      Will this change the number of electoral votes and house representative each state has? Because if not, this seems to benefit Oregon: concentrates Republicans in Idaho while lessening the impact of their vote.

      • cbarrick@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The number of electoral votes and the number of reps is based on population and is decided by the census.

        So if this happens, at the latest, the votes would get fixed in 2031. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this is part of the deal. Obviously those switching to Idaho want to bring their votes with them.

        • Neato@ttrpg.network
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          6 months ago

          Ah yeah. It was the total votes and minimums for Wyoming in Congress I was thinking of. That needs to be readjusted.

    • wavebeam@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It’s actually dumber than you describe. Everywhere west of the cascades is like 99% federal land