Greater Idaho movement: 13 counties in eastern Oregon have voted to secede and join Idaho ( ktvz.com )

orclev , 1 month ago

I'm trying to decide if this would be a net positive or negative.

Looking at the congressional districts for Oregon and Idaho it looks like about 5 or 6 districts that are all Republican controlled. Currently Idaho has two congressional districts that both lean heavily Republican. Shifting 5 or 6 Republican congressional seats from Oregon to Idaho I don't see making a significant difference to Congress.

Looking at things in the Senate both Idaho senators are Republican and adding more Republican districts won't really change that in any meaningful way. On the flip side both of Oregon's Senators are currently Democrats and I can't imagine removing a bunch of Republican voters from the state would do anything but reduce the chances of one of those Senate seats getting flipped.

I'm not really seeing any way in which this would help Republicans or hurt Democrats other than just by generally strengthening each party's hold on its respective state.

Invertedouroboros , 1 month ago

It's been a while since I've looked at this but not only is such an arrangement impossible without federal input (as the comment from tal states) but I seem to recall seeing that a lot of the counties looking to join the greater Idaho thing are some of the ones most dependent on the Oregon state government for funding. If they did manage to leave then it'd actually probably be a net boon for Oregon in terms of state resources going to places where people actually live.

The resultant Greater Idaho though? Suddenly saddled with a bunch of counties that need a lot of help to maintain services and seemingly a general political attitude of the government shouldn't help people. In my personal opinion it'd turn pretty fucking distopian pretty quick, that is of course assuming that they could somehow get Oregon, Idaho and the federal government to agree to their scheme. I don't think it's going to happen, even if they can get some counties to sign off on it. But if they did the people of those same counties would likely come to regret it not long afterwards.

Also just as a brief note I think my information on this is like more than a year old and I don't think I could find it again to to quote it. So if someone has better/more up to date info that negates anything I've said feel free to post it.

tal , 1 month ago

So, this sort of thing requires both Congressional and state approval.

US Constitution, Article IV, Section 3.

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

Looking at the map, I'd guess that this isn't because of fundamental geographical differences, but because the current party split tends to be a rural-urban one. Here's a population density map for Oregon:

https://d43fweuh3sg51.cloudfront.net/media/media_files/6ee39caa-dd64-494c-b0c6-bb29e1bbee0e/4ab7be15-971f-442b-8fd0-c1134782a003.jpg

https://d43fweuh3sg51.cloudfront.net/media/media_files/6ee39caa-dd64-494c-b0c6-bb29e1bbee0e/4ab7be15-971f-442b-8fd0-c1134782a003.jpg

The more rural areas of Oregon, the counties without cities, are, based on current political coalitions, politically more similar to Idaho than to liberal coastal Oregon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System

The Sixth Party System is the era in United States politics following the Fifth Party System. As with any periodization, opinions differ on when the Sixth Party System may have begun, with suggested dates ranging from the late 1960s to the Republican Revolution of 1994. Nonetheless, there is agreement among scholars that the Sixth Party System features strong division between the Democratic and Republican parties, which are rooted in socioeconomic class, cultural, religious, educational and racial issues, and debates over the proper role of government.[1]

The Sixth Party System is characterized by an electoral shift from the electoral coalitions of the Fifth Party System during the New Deal. The Republican Party became the dominant party in the South, rural areas, and suburbs, and its voter base became shaped by White Evangelicals.[2] Meanwhile, the Democratic Party became the dominant party in urban areas, and its voter base diversified to include trade unionists, urban machinists, progressive intellectuals, as well as racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.