[ericmay]

Idk, why not just break up Oregon a little bit?

I don't have a dog in this fight, but... why are we so adamant about clinging to certain structures even if they don't work for people?

You might say "but not everybody agrees with this move..." well sure but at what point do we say the will of the general population matters more without appealing to some higher authority like the U.S. to implement rules that you agree with even if the local population doesn't?

Some reasonable lines can be drawn. For example, obviously you can't let a group of people just murder other people or something. But what about letting them teach the Bible or Islam in their schools? I mean, it's their schools right? Don't their property taxes pay for them? It's a complicated subject, IMO.

And if you want less clear examples it would be easy to find.

The truth of the matter as I see it is that this "problem" is not going away. Nation states are an historical anomaly, and now that there's no war and need to organize for something meaningful, and the world has gotten much smaller, we're seeing fractures come into being. This could be (and I'm not comparing any of these) Basque rebels, Ireland, China geocoding Uighur Muslims to make room for Han Chinese, Quebec, etc. and you can also look at general wealth and outperformance of smaller countries that trend toward being city states as they can and tend to more freely compete without risk of violence on the international stage.

IMO cryptocurrency, fracturing and bankrupt nation states, and other things will largely destroy the nation states as we know them today, barring anything unforeseen. It'll take a while though, we're just living through history.

And FWIW I am a U.S. Army veteran - so I'm pretty 'Murica, but as much as I don't want to admit it, it seems to me that just having such a large country with a population that is increasingly divided, is just going to lead toward separatists movements.

And just to get a cheap-shot at Texas. Sure is a whole lot of boot and no spur there when you want to deny federal aid to other states, but then have your own problems and come begging hat in hand from the feds. Where's your seccession now?

Anyway.

[Pfhreak]

Because America is balanced on a knife's edge, and the Senate and Electoral college basically runs the show.

If you introduce a new state that leans blue, that's two more blue senators and N more electoral college votes for a blue president. Republicans will staunchly oppose this. And vice versa.

If the senate were proportional to population, and if the electoral college were likewise apportioned via popular vote, then maybe you could be more flexible with state boundaries.

[ericmay]

You're in the wrong frame of reference here and trying to balance out some sort of America that I think is likely to not exist all that long.

The senate thing though wouldn't be relevant based on what this article is saying. Oregon would have 2 senators as it does now, Idaho would have 2 as well. Potentially could have an effect on the house though but that depends on the population demographics.

> If the senate were proportional to population, and if the electoral college were likewise apportioned via popular vote, then maybe you could be more flexible with state boundaries.

Well no I don't think that would change much. But I also view the senate as it currently exists as good. Frankly, legislation was intended to be difficult to pass - it should be even more difficult to pass. If something doesn't have broad consensus then getting a slight majority and ramming it down the other side's throat (why are there only two sides anyway) is a lightning rod for partisanship.

But also, why would there be states in a hundred or two hundred years? Maybe nuclear weapons will keep the nation state together like it has Russia. Idk.

[throwaway0a5e]

It shouldn't be hard to divy up states (granted you might have to cut a state into more than two parts in some cases) in a way that results in no net gain for either party. It's a simple math problem.

[Pfhreak]

But that doesn't solve the problem. If the problem is, "East Oregonians feel disconnected from West Oregonians", I don't think there's a way to split Oregon that results in a net equal number of new representatives and simultaneously addresses the "we're too politically divided" concern.

Yes, you could slice Oregon in half horizontally and maintain the same number of reps, but then you'd have two new states with the East feeling divided. If you split it vertically, then you have the problem of uneven representation.