5 Oregon Counties vote to join Idaho

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Five rural counties in Oregon voted this week to press forward with a plan to leave the state and merge with neighboring Idaho, the latest move in a long-shot campaign by conservatives who say they’re fed up with Oregon’s left-leaning politics.

Voters in Baker, Grant, Lake, Malheur and Sherman counties — sparsely populated areas in the state’s eastern half — approved ballot measures Tuesday requiring local officials to consider redrawing the border to make them Idahoans.

Behind the push is a nonprofit called Citizens for Greater Idaho that argues the predominantly Republican parts of Oregon would be better served if Idaho incorporated them. The group’s president, Mike McCarter, says the expanded state he envisions would become the country’s third-largest in terms of landmass.

The votes in favor of the idea reflect a deepening of divisions between the state’s urban and rural populations that has become more pronounced in recent years. Democrats in the state have flocked to densely populated counties in the west, while Republicans have expanded their majorities in the east.

McCarter has called the effort “a peaceful revolution” and a way “to gain political refuge from blue states” in interviews with the Oregonian. He claims that relocating the border could bring tax benefits to both states and ease some political gridlock in Oregon.

Idaho, aka Utah on Crack

One part of Southern Oregon is acting like a state all its own
alongside a part of Northern California south of it.

That map in the article of the proposed "Greater Idaho" goes WAY beyond what I would have expected from the headline about "five rural counties". The headline makes it sound like they just want Oregan east of the Cascades to join Idaho (even that would be more than just those five counties). But the map shows this hypothetical state reaching the Pacific coast, AND crossing the state line and including a sizable chunk of northern California (probably the area you're talking about)as well. That would leave only a tiny corner of the northeast coast of present day Oregon as "Oregon", and make Idaho a HUGE state - and a state with a seashore.

Is the OR-CA state the one they call Jefferson?