Secession was on the menu for five rural counties in Oregon last May. Voters in Malheur, Sherman, Grant, Baker, and Lake counties voted to secede from Oregon and become part of Idaho, according to The Epoch Times.
These counties joined Jefferson and Union counties which had voted in 2020 to leave the state.
Last month, Harney County became the eighth county to vote for secession.
The Epoch Times explains the odds of this actually happening are long because of the numerous hurdles involved. Here’s what it would take:
It would require a formal vote in the Democratic-controlled Oregon legislature. If that goes through, Oregon and Idaho would have to come up with a deal, which would then have to be ratified by the U.S. Congress.
Throughout the history of the United States, changing state lines has been a rare occurrence—all taking place before the 20th century. In 1792, Kentucky was created from Virginia’s territory, Maine was created from Massachusetts in 1820, and West Virginia in 1863 was admitted into the United States when Union states and counties separated themselves from the Confederate ones during the Civil War.
The group behind this effort is called “Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho.” Unhappy with the liberal government in Oregon, they’d rather be part of a freer, more conservative state.
In May, Mike McCarter, president of Citizens for Greater Idaho, told a local media outlet, “This election proves that rural Oregon wants out of Oregon. If Oregon really believes in liberal values such as self-determination, the Legislature won’t hold our counties captive against our will. If we’re allowed to vote for which government officials we want, we should be allowed to vote for which government we want as well.”
McCarter also said that Republican Idaho state Reps. Barbara Ehardt and Judy Boyle “plan to introduce legislation to move toward possible relocation of the Idaho/Oregon border next January.”
Who could possibly blame these voters for wanting to leave the insanity that defines Oregon’s leadership for the conservative governance of Idaho?
An article published by The Atlantic last week claimed this effort is the most successful secession movement in the country. Here is an excerpt from that piece (which is behind a paywall) via HotAir.
Last month, Harney County, in the high desert of eastern Oregon, became the state’s eighth to pass a nonbinding ballot measure supporting Darrow’s proposal. ‘Move Oregon’s Border’ signs now dot the region’s empty highways, and Mike McCarter, a retired agricultural nurseryman and gun-club owner who runs a group pushing for the boundary reshuffle, travels the state in a bright-red trucker hat bearing the slogan. “We don’t care to move, because we’re tied to our land here,” he told me recently. “So why not just allow us to be governed by another state?” He mentioned a supporter so certain that her property will become part of Idaho that she already flies its state flag on her lawn. “We’re going to be Idaho,” she told him.
Scenes from Portland, where Black Lives Matter protesters have sparred with the Proud Boys in paintball brawls over the past year, and worries that liberal lawmakers in Salem will outlaw diesel fuel and artificial insemination of animals, have calcified many rural Oregonians’ sense of total alienation from the west side of the state. “This is not the Oregon I know,” Sandie Gilson, one of Move Oregon’s Border’s “county captains,” told me. “We were farmers and ranchers and loggers. None of those values are left.” Today, half of Oregon’s population lives in the Portland metropolitan area alone. In eastern Oregon, Gilson pays for two emergency helicopter-airlift insurance plans in case she has to go to a hospital hundreds of miles away in Bend or Boise…
The Greater Idaho proposal would grant Idaho more than three-quarters of Oregon’s land, more than 870,000 of its residents, and access to the ocean; most specifics beyond this have yet to be envisioned. “Idaho fits with what I feel,” Mike Slinkard, a fifth-generation Oregonian who makes high-stealth hunting clothing, told me. “Oregon left us out in the cold. We don’t exist.”
Source of Maps: Greater Idaho website
Current:
Proposed:
Are Americans starting to fight back against the massive Democratic power grab? I certainly hope so.
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