No Vote? Really?

I just listened to a CBS News report on a movement underway for several eastern Oregon counties to separate from Oregon and become part of Idaho. The primary purpose given was that these eastern counties are upset that the state as a whole is rather Blue while these counties are Red and they are unable to get anything to go their way where there is a Blue/Red divide.

The report was peppered with sound bites from an interview with Mike McCarter, a man who lived in the westernmost of the eastern counties being discussed. Since he had initiated the process of querying others in his county, then in other eastern counties, it seemed that his thoughts generally captured the crux of the issues. If you just listen to the statements made, along with a few stories of others in more eastern counties, you begin to get a picture of people unrepresented in the state’s government.

The report ends with a quote from McCarter asking “Why can't people still have the right to vote for who governs them?”

And in that one quote, the whole thing fell apart for me. There is a kind of “I’ve got the right to have my way and if I can’t have it I will say that I don’t have a vote.” It tries to capture the sentiment of the cries at the Boston Tea Party of "taxation without representation." In the case of the American colonists, that was a true statement as there was no input to the government through voting, unlike the citizens back in England. Since all of Oregon gets to vote for its governor and members of the state's legislative body, the mere fact that they did not get the kind of local representative they wanted does not constitute a lack of a vote. Or of a "right to vote."

So I started looking into some of the arguments throughout the article.

First, Mr. McCarter refers to the counties on the eastern side of the Cascade range as a unified Red block. But it is not really so. There are approximately 20 counties in this eastern part of the state. As of the completion of the report, 12 have voted in favor of considering the idea. But one in the middle of the area has voted against it, and the county in which Mr. Carter lives is among the counties that have not yet voted, and it would seem unlikely that they will vote in favor of it. Deschutes County has been morphing from somewhat Red to securely Blue over the years with the biggest city, Bend, firmly Blue for several years.

Add to that the fact that the most liberal part of the state is the Portland metro area, along with the larger cities along I-5 to the south (which is all to the west of the Cascade range), just the cities in the top 50 that are within roughly 40 miles of I-5 constitute about 51% of the state’s population. If the idea must have the state's consent, they will need all of Oregon — including the Bluer parts in the west — to make it happen.

Some of the other arguments were, in my opinion, quite lame. The owner of a real estate agency in John Day noted that it was much closer to Boise, Idaho’s capital, than it was to Oregon’s capital in Salem. But this argument is not really relevant. I should point out that Amarillo, TX is closer to the capitals of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma than it is to Austin, TX. Mere proximity to a capital is not a basis for inclusion or exclusion in a state.

But all of this still revolves around a false-flag claim that they are not represented in the Orgon government. But that is not true. It is a sound bite that captures the imagination but has no factual support. They are represented by the state legislators that their districts chose. That the representative elected is not the one you choose is in no way the same as not having a vote.

But when you are arguing with sound bites, you have to hope that your listeners are not thinking beyond the pseudo implication.