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.
This is so damn odd, it’s a state. Just move. It’s not another country. Shit like this is what makes me think we should just abolish the states honestly. This mindset is weird
The idea of States and federal governments make no sense to me. Same country but different set of laws? Why even form a country?
It’s not a country and never has been, it’s a union of states.
“State” in general terms usually refers to an entire country, notice the term “state department”
Nation States. At it’s core the federal government was meant to be basically like the EU, each member retaining autonomy but joining the union and agreeing to abide by its rules in order to gain access to collective benefits.
The reality of the situation is that this “country” was formed as a business proposition and that’s all it’s ever been. America is a business not a nation of people, the rest is pure propaganda.
States are the test tubes of government ideas.
Lol no
How could I disagree, and 3 people agree with you and at least that many felt they should down vote, of course California legislation is dictated by you morons in the South… Or maybe your a moron from California, thankfully there’s a smaller proportion of your type out here.
Lol no.
Look at lemmy. Same country, different laws per instance and different laws in the communities.
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I don’t understand what the country is in your analogy
The country is Lemmy the software itself.
Well, the federation. You could have many federations, and many instances don’t use Lemmy.
The United States formed as a group of semi-sovereign political entities that wanted to make their own laws, but needed a common defense, foreign, and trade policy to prevent recolonization.
The founding fathers knew that the country wouldn’t agree on everything, so they set up a system where a lot of decisions would be made by more local officials.
Other federations work on the same principle. It is a lot easier to get political consensus in a smaller group than a larger one, so a lot of decisions are pushed to more local entities.
Some people are too poor to move. Just move is an insane idea and we need to eradicate it.
Just move is a perfectly legitimate idea when the only reason you want to move is because a political ideology. Not even political ideology wanting to impose your political ideology. If this was an economic issue I would never say just move. If this was a persecution issue I would never say just move. If this was any legitimate issue I would never say just move. However this is obviously, pathetically obviously, none of those things. They don’t like the people around them. They’re bigots. Bigots should move.
Frankly I think it’s absurd that you’re even suggesting that they have some kind of legitimate gripe. Equating their issue to anything legitimate is beyond ignorant.
Fucking EXACTLY!
claiming these assholes are the disenfranchised ones is full on fascist lies. Sickening.
So moving is an insane idea, but transferring huge portions of land between states is totally rational and reasonable?
According to the people in power. Correct.
The “people in power” didn’t suggest that moving is an insane idea, you did.
Yeah my apologies I was more responding to the second half of your commentary as it’s obvious I suggested that not them.
Considering that it’s just some imaginary line in the dirt that a bunch of people agree on the location of, yeah it’s a lot more rational than everything you go through to physically move
lol what?!?
The concept of “Idaho” is an entirely societally defined concept. If everyone agrees you are in Idaho, then you are in Idaho. If all you care about is being in Idaho, and you can do that with less effort and resources than physically moving across state lines, why wouldn’t you do that?
I think it’s a pretty short sighted and selfish thing to do, but it is entirely rational.
If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you can’t afford to move. You can’t afford the moving van, you certainly can’t afford a week or two without work, and you can’t afford to go to job interviews in the place where you want to live.
But if you don’t have to move, and instead you work with people around you to change the current geopolitical structure, that’s something that you can help be a part of by signing a petition or driving down to your town hall it’s a month for a meeting.
I agree with you that overall it would make sense for people to move, but logistically many of them can’t. And even if they could, maybe they like the place they live. Maybe they’re lucky enough to own property, and the problem they have is not with their neighborhood, so they’d rather not replace it.
Seems like a stupid vote then: choose to leave a state with at least some services to join one without, just to make it easier for a few landowners to extract resources without regard to the environment
The cost of living is cheaper in Idaho! They’d just be giving up things like 1/3 the per student spending, physicians leaving to avoid idaho’s abortion laws, and face lower road spending, worse unemployment rights… I mean the benefits are right there. For the rest of us in Oregon. Sign here, press hard, 3 copies. Finally we can get rid of those walkout issues in the house.
Oregexit your hearts out. Don’t let the non gendered bathroom handle hit you on the ass as you go.
The more crazed element of the Oregon left are so damn detacted from reality that this won’t even ring alarm bells. Every left swing has a counter swing. Time to stop being divisive and look for common ground.
Common ground with Neo Nazis and the KKK?
Are you FUCKING SERIOUS???
And Trump is your common ground, I suppose?
He’s the one to avoid. You seem to have missed the point.
You seem to be living entirely in fantasy fucking land
Is that why the dems are now acting like Regan supporters?
The first neoliberal president was Jimmy Carter. The second was Reagan.
Nah… they seem based as fuck tbh.
What the fuck?
I don’t blame’em.
Yeah, you Republicans are fucking dumb.
some 300 people live in some of those counties, which is like a city block in portland. If they want to be idaho so much why not just move there?
I can really sympathize with these guys. I live in a blue dot in one of the reddest states in the country. I have been talking with my friends about doing this exact thing.
Technically this is not secession. It’s partitioning. They want to partition themselves and join Idaho. Just like I’d love to partition my city away from the shit hole parasitic state it’s attached to.
The state level representation just isn’t there for them. They’re so dramatically in the minority that they have no voice in state government at all. So changes are mandated to them, and they’re disillusioned. They love their home and they want the government to recognize them.
Set aside the crazy bullshit they want. The grievance is legitimate, the government completely ignores their desires, they haven’t been able to get the government to acknowledge that, and so they retaliate by saying they don’t want to be a part of it anymore.
To be clear, there is no resolution for people in this situation. They have no control over the state government, no ability to change it. The only choice is to leave, and faced with moving or a long shot at leaving or taking your home with you, you’d choose to take your home, every time.
You’re so entirely full of shit.
These people are vastly OVER REPRESENTED STATISTICALLY.
the disenfranchised live in the cities that these clowns terrorize and YOU FUCKING KNOW IT.
Lying is all you cunts have though
Well half of them at any rate. I guess the other half just get shit on? Usually these kinds of measures require more like 3/4 votes.
The grievance is legitimate, the government completely ignores their desires…
I see your point, but their “desires” are to oppress or kill the normal people, so I just don’t see their grievances as legitimate. Conservatives are furious that they are unable to use legislation to further their conservative values of racism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, transphobia, antisemitism and other conservative bigotry. There is simply no room in a modern culture for hate-based ideologies like conservatism.
We should not legitimize their harmful desires by recognizing their “grievances”. Instead, we should marginalize hate by marginalizing the haters.
In short, fuck 'em.
This is caused by Gerrymandering and antidemocratic voter suppression. But Republicans don’t want to fix those issues because they’d be a regional party overnight limited to just the south.
This is something both parties are guilty of. Neither is all that interested in fixing it until they’re the victims of it.
This doesn’t get fixed with a two party system.
Ah yes, those vote suppressing Democrats…
I do think there needs to be a dissolution of the parties, but accusing both sides of being the same is not valid nor useful in the state (lol, country?) that we currently live in.
I’m not saying both sides are the same. I’m accusing two different political parties of employing the same shitty tactics, which they most definitely are.
Is one party more guilty of it? Sure. But denying that the Democrats are gerrymandering is delusional.
Oregon’s 2021 congressional map received an F from the gerrymandering project for giving one party a significant advantage.
https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card?planId=rec6qj1vAOKsBnXnu
Drawn and enacted exclusively by Democrats.
Don’t lie to yourself. They’re still fucking politicians.
Please show me a better map for Oregon districts
There are several available at the link I shared. It might be more than one click but, because you’re presumably able to read, a big smart guy like you should have no trouble finding them.
All governments are run by politicians, by definition. Are you in favor of an anarchist power vacuum that will instantly attract people wanting to set up their own terrible governments?
What do they want that Idaho can provide that Oregon can’t? Some people have to flee entire states over abortion laws for lifesaving medical procedures and they’re told stuff like “well if you don’t like it just move”.
Imagine scraping the money together to move from Idaho to Oregon to protect your health and bodily autonomy, then 300 of your neighbors get together and decide, nope, you’re still in Idaho.
I appreciate that. And this is a great example to whip out when those idiots say shit like that. Obviously moving isn’t an option for most people and for those whom it is, they likely have.
What exactly they want isn’t important, just that it’s very much the opposite of how the state is being run. Admittedly some of the demands fall under crazy bullshit, but the central issue is agency. Politically speaking they have very little, and this is the one lever left to them to pull.
Imagine you’re on a train of trolleys, and every time it comes to a point where a direction could be chosen, every car votes and consistently the ones at the back are out voted by the other cars. You can’t get off and buy another ticket. But you might be able to detach the cars.
Furthermore, reorganization like this should be done far more frequently than it’s being done. Why shouldn’t we allow disparate peoples of similar opinions vote together and govern each other? Why are we locked in to the lines on a map, the last major change of which happened in 1867. Since then, the borders have remained relatively unchanged.
Not only should they, a group of people I likely hold only one fundamental belief in common with, not be afforded some self governance?
Imagine you’re on a train of trolleys, and every time it comes to a point where a direction could be chosen, every car votes and consistently the ones at the back are out voted by the other cars. You can’t get off and buy another ticket. But you might be able to detach the cars.
So, you’re describing the 47% who do not want to partition?
The ability to be more open about being white supremacist garbage. Idaho is a dumpster fire - the state is suffering shortages of medical professionals because of the GQP.
Though it is only 53% of them that want this. Not that I think that should cancel the entire vote, but it should complicate the situation because a 6% difference shouldn’t change the situation into one that 47% don’t want.
I live in a blue dot in one of the reddest states in the country.
Austin Texas.
Or Lawrence, KS, or Lincoln, NE, or Atlanta, GA
Or Asheville NC
Omaha is the blue dot in NE. I’m from Nebraska. Even though it might be liberal, Lincoln is definitely a Big Red dot.
This is why proportional voting is good. The best answer is to give them more accurate representation as part of oregon.
Without some trade for like a blue part of idaho this trade just stacks the deck one way. not 100% of the people in those districts want to leave and there’s blue parts of idaho, why not trade those for red parts of oregon if it’s “just partitioning” why abandon the 20-49% of whomever is in those red districts that would go straight back to being unrepresented
No, this is just right wingers wanting things 100% their way with no reasonable offer on the the table. There’s no “legitimacy” here.
There are natural resources out there that the land owners want to extract. Washington’s and Oregon’s environmental law is far more stringent than Idaho’s.
Because they like to play dress up pretend “patriot” and fantasize about murdering the blacks and gays.
They probably own farms
Slight addendum: they own small parcels of land surrounded by public land that pay miniscule fees to use as they please for ranching.
More proof that mostly Republicans use welfare services, living off the US government.
Just get rid of the electoral college already and stop giving these dipshit minorities a chance in hell of moving this country backwards.
I know what you mean, but… phrasing?
How about Lesser Idaho.
How about Nodaho.
No map. It’s just a lack of Idaho.
Youdaho
That is all
WEdaho
Yomomdaho
That will make Idaho look even stupider.
And it’s already our stupidest-looking state.
Florida would beg to differ.
Florida has a big fat dick. Idaho has a pencil dick.
I will look like the front view of a fist giving the middle finger. Which seems appropriate.
A little narrow baby finger. Maybe it will make people think of Trump.
These people want to abandon everything that makes their lives great for… (checks notes) The rights to control women, marry children, and to burn crosses on their ethnic neighbors lawn.
Mostly (and this is probably true for over 60% of Republicans), it’s about defunding half of the government programs they rely on but don’t realize it, sold to them through the euphemism of “tax cuts”.
I think the right to control women is next on the list, but even then we see that even republican public opinion on abortions is stricter than the left’s, but would actually prefer less extreme laws than what has been passed.
As much of a meme as it is, most rural religious folk aren’t militant about marrying children and burning crosses. We hear about every instance of child marriage cause it sucks so much, and people have been openly, violently racist despite the law for centuries, all it takes is a town full of like-minded people.
Yea this might have something to do with it
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/24/people-rights-network-oregon-elections
At least 66 members of far-right group in rural Oregon standing for office
Revealed: anti-government People’s Rights Network, founded by Ammon Bundy, appearing to follow ‘entryism’ strategy
At least 66 members of an anti-government group founded by far-right militia figure Ammon Bundy have attempted to win local positions of influence in the Republican party in Oregon, the Guardian can reveal.
The candidates stood for Republican precinct committee person (PCP) slots in three central Oregon counties in this week’s elections, with some facing no opponent and thus winning their positions by default. The role of PCPs includes electing the executive of the county-level GOP apparatus.
The move is part of what appears to be a coordinated attempt to capture the local Republican party infrastructure, following a far-right strategy of “entryism” into more mainstream political bodies.
You know things are about to get spicy when a state/nation adds the prefix “Greater” to its name
We all know it really means “Jumbo size Shitshow of Dumbfuckery”
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:
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.
A state isn’t being formed: they’re just moving the lines. So I don’t think that comes into play.
They’re not, though. Not without the permission of the Oregon state government, the Idaho state government, and the US congress. That’s the point. This is a tiny portion of the population of Oregon. They don’t get to just decide they live in Idaho now.
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.
Easy. If Oregon loses a bunch of population and land area to Idaho, then they will probably then make an argument for taking away electors from Oregon and give them to Idaho.
Republicans struggle to get popular vote but can get electoral college, slim margins. This would potentially increase their electoral college advantage.
Exactly this. With the electoral college system, those republican voters count towards the population numbers to assign electors, but the state always goes blue. If these counties move to Idaho, those Republican voters help shift electors to Idaho, and will go red.
Sorry, the US election process is broken, and we don’t need more games by republicans to sneak in more electoral votes. I hope this measure never sees the light of day.
That assumes that the population of these counties is significant compared to the cities though, right? These seem to be the lowest population-density counties in the state.
To the extent they contribute to Oregon’s electoral votes, they would then contribute to Idaho. The fact they are relatively lower population can still move the votes. Have a hard time digging up nice easy data, but they have 8 votes today and even a relative minority of voters going could change that from 8 votes all for democrats to 2 or 3 votes for republican. As someone else said, rinse and repeat for Washington state. Then, off to take part of california to make Nevada a sure thing for republicans and give nevada more votes. Also probably poking all over to erode blue states, carving out some of viginia between kentucky and west viginia, and illinois, colorado, and minnesota are also ripe targets. So Republicans can free up some of those electoral votes that are buried under blue, and press an advantage where they already overcome the popular vote with electoral votes a lot of time.
This is a strategy that won’t work for democrats, as the democratic regions in red states tend to be surrounded by a sea of red, with no logical way to ‘free’ those votes for the benefit of the democrats. They would instead have to push for proportional electoral college votes within their states or to go popular vote nationwide.
So on the one hand, the secession strategy shouldn’t work, as it is explicitly unconstitutional, but the GOP would really want it to happen, and they might be able to make it so. The converse strategies may be constitutional, but would require people to approve of it that would be explicitly undermined by it.
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.
It’s always a little odd seeing the people who rely on the benefits of bigger government constantly doing what they can to have a smaller government.
they also rely on those big cities they hate so much to provide some of the funding for the services and infrastructure they no-doubt take for granted.
Exactly this. It’s the same situation here in Washington. These people who want to leave Oregon and Washington for Idaho don’t recognize how much of their infrastructure is paid for by the western sides of the states. Frustratingly, many of them somehow think that they are the ones sending their tax dollars to the “liberal” areas, when it is very much the other way around.
Electoral college. Idaho always goes red, Oregon always go blue. Moving population from Oregon to Idaho transfers electoral votes from a blue state to a red state.
Whether it matters or not depends on whether it changes the tipping point state in any given election, which is hard to know in advance, but for the red team it is at worst identical to the current setup and at best a small boost to their chances in a presidential election. Conversely for the blue team it can either be meaningless or a slight negative.
a shift of ~ 240k people from oregon to idaho would result in oregon going back down to 5 congressional districts, and idaho gaining one for three. so one electoral vote moves from a reliably-democratic state to a republican one. that one elector could very well swing a presidential election.
iirc, changes to state boundaries requires approval of both states and congress (and also the president, who would have to sign-off on the legislation passed there). oregon would never go for it–not entirely sure idaho would be on-board, either, even with the thought of gaining a congressional seat. providing state services and funding to that region would be a perpetual net-drain on idaho’s economy.
