As President Donald Trump, great ideas such as Rekon invented the Panama Canal and the takeover of Greenland, some rural residents of Illinois and Oregon promote the geopolitical change themselves: they want to detach themselves from their states and maybe combine with Indiana and Idaho.
Proponents say that they have more with their rural brothers throughout national borders than with cities in Chicago and Portland, Oregon. And they claim that the cities in the state government, which are democratically led, have so much influence that rural, Republican voices are drowned out.
In the past five years, voters in 33 counties in Illinois have been asked whether they would like to consider Chicagos Cook County to form a up-to-date state. Every time a majority said yes.
Some politicians in neighboring Indiana seem to be ready for the idea. The state’s House of Representatives recently made legislation that would welcome the counties of Illinois in Indianas Fold. Such a deal would mark the first major realignment of the states since Virginia West Virginia in order to stay with the Union during the civil war. Despite some local dynamics, there are essential obstacles to the resolving of state borders in the United States for the beginning that the states would have to agree to the counties, which is a long shot. The congress would also have to agree.
According to the National Center for Interior Compact of the State of State Governments, the state borders in the entire US history have changed at least 50 times. Many changes were relatively low, which was based on shifted rivers or the restoration of markers from protracted surveys.
However, the organizers in Illinois and Oregon hope to employ the current political environment.
“With this polarization,” said GH Merritt, chairman of the Pro Breakaway Group New Illinois. “I don’t know, man, it could only reach a turning point.”
Why do some want to separate in Illinois?
At least three organizations urge a certain reconfiguration of the counties in Illinois to separate from Chicago and his closest suburbs.
Cook County contains about 40% of the state’s population, including the majority of black, Asian and Hispanic residents, and is known for its cultural treasures, deep pension debt and a history of crime. Democrats dominate legislative districts from the Chicago region, while the Republicans represent the most other parts of the state.
For Merritt, the problem is that since the U.S.’s Supreme Court decided in 1964 that all legislative seats should be assigned to population rather than on the districts based on the population that Chicago had all political influences.
“What we experience in Illinois is very similar to what the founders were complained about in colonial times,” she said. “We have taxes without representation.”
The officials of the ballot papers measure voters that enable the officials in each district with which to work from other counties to form a up-to-date state. But the suggestions no longer explained independence.
The legislators of Indiana reacted to these votes by promoting a legislative template that could begin the talks at the state level.
“Instead of deciding, we believe that we have something to offer here,” said the spokesman for Indiana House, Todd Huston, a Republican who sponsored the measure in an interview. He noticed that his state has lower taxes and higher economic growth than Illinois.
But do not count on the fact that Illinois is receptive: At the beginning of this year, Governor JB Pritzker, a democrat, described Indiana’s legislation as a “stunt” that would never represent anything.
What’s going on in Oregon?
For several years, the inhabitants of rural, Republican Eastern Easternoegon have been laid the basis for the separation of the democratically dominated counties on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. Your goal is to reliably join Red Idaho.
The Greater Idaho movement has won non -binding elections in 13 counties. Rathäuser kept followers, sold hats and T-shirts and built advertising boards with messages such as “Release Ost Oregon”.
Idaho’s house adopted a measure two years ago in which he Oregon invoices to enter into discussions. However, similar measures remain buried in the legislation of Oregon with little prospects.
“At this point, the state of Oregon keeps us in captivity,” said Matt McCaw, managing director of Greater Idaho.
State borders change, but not often or after a lot
It has been over 150 years since entire counties have postponed states. After Virginia moved out of the USA in 1861, Union -Loyalists formed the up-to-date state of West Virginia. The fate of two counties remained controversial until the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1871 that they belonged to West Virginia.
Since then there have been numerous failed attempts at the direction. The writer Norman Mailer ran for the Mayor of New York in 1969 and asked the city to become the 51st state. Five counties in Southern New Jersey voted for the MP in 1980; And California has stopped several suggestions for splitting the state. At the beginning of this year, an IOWA legislator proposed to buy nine counties in South -Minnesota.
The geographer Garrett Dash Nelson once proposed to re -draw all national borders to organize them in the U -Bahn areas. But he recognizes the challenges.
“I don’t see many evidence that there is a lot of real political will or interest in drawing national borders again,” said Nelson, President and chief curator of the Leventhal Map & Education Center in the Boston Public Library. “It would be such an enormous buoyancy.”
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The Associated Press Writer Claire Rush contributed to this report.
