Should Idaho swallow parts of Oregon? Thousands of Oregon voters want it considered
Voters in another Oregon county would like to join Idaho.
More than 1,500 people — or 63% of voters — in southeast Oregon’s Harney County voted Tuesday in favor of a ballot measure to consider relocating the Oregon-Idaho border to ditch their own state, according to election results as of Wednesday morning.
Residents in seven other Oregon counties previously voted in favor of similar ballot measures that would lead to them becoming Idahoans. Voters in Sherman, Lake, Grant, Baker, Malheur, Union and Jefferson counties all voted in favor during May and November 2020 elections.
The ballot initiatives call on county officials to meet to discuss and consider changes to the Oregon-Idaho border.
“Rural Oregon is declaring as loudly as it can that it does not consent to being misgoverned by Oregon’s leadership and chooses to be governed as part of a state that understands rural Oregon’s values and way of making a living,” Mike McCarter, president of Move Oregon’s Border, said in a news release. “We call on the Oregon Legislature to not dare to hold these counties captive.”
The vote is only the first step of the “Greater Idaho” project, which would allow some Oregon counties to join a state that advocates say more closely aligns with their political preferences.
Proponents say the “swaths of conservative, pro-Trump, anti-tax voters” in rural parts of Oregon have more in common with Idaho, which they want to claim as their own state.
Oregon, which currently has two Democratic senators in the U.S. Senate, has voted blue in presidential elections since 1988, while Idaho, with two Republican senators, has voted red in presidential contests since 1968.
The complicated, multi-step process would require approval from both the Idaho and Oregon state legislatures, as well as approval from the U.S. Congress. The group hopes to eventually incorporate all but 14 of Oregon’s 36 counties.
The counties that would stay in Oregon would be mostly in the wine-rich Willamette Valley.
“Rural counties have become increasingly outraged by laws coming out of the Oregon Legislature that threaten our livelihoods, our industries, our wallet, our gun rights, and our values,” McCarter previously said in a news release. “We tried voting those legislators out but rural Oregon is outnumbered and our voices are now ignored. This is our last resort.”
Organizers of the “Move Oregon’s Border” and “Greater Idaho” movement said they are hoping to get enough signatures to get measures on the ballot in two more counties in the May 2022 elections.
A recent survey, conducted by the Trafalgar Group on behalf of Citizens for Greater Idaho, aimed to determined how many Idahoans are in favor of the border move. About 51% of likely voters said they either definitely or probably supported rural Oregon counties joining their state, 35% were definitely or probably opposed, and 14% were undecided. The survey, conducted Oct. 23-27, included 1,112 likely voters and had a margin of error or plus or minus 2.9%.
About 40% of those polled said they had “heard quite a bit” about the movement to move Idaho’s border, nearly 39% said they’d “barely heard of it” and 21% said they hadn’t heard about the effort before, according to the results.
This story was originally published November 3, 2021 at 9:11 AM.