A court ruling has created another setback for an Oregon movement eyeing the formation of a “Greater Idaho” merging parts of eastern Oregon, northern California, and Idaho into one state.
The “Move Oregon’s Border” movement is described by its members as a collection of “Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, Republicans, and non-aligned Americans” disillusioned with Oregon’s liberal urban areas.
Its plan is to incorporate rural areas of the state with Idaho and northern California by petitioning to put secession to a vote in each of the movement’s desired counties. Fifteen Oregon counties have ongoing petitions.
The initiative would have to receive approval from the Idaho, Oregon, and California state legislatures.
The movement’s president, Michael McCarter, filed a federal lawsuit in an attempt to bypass the required number of signatures to put secession on county ballots. The COVID-19 public health restrictions, McCarter argues, make it “practically impossible” to collect mass signatures.
The number of signatures required to pass a 2020 ballot initiative in Oregon is 112,020—or roughly six percent of the total votes cast in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
“We don’t have the corporate money necessary to send mass mailings of petitions to citizens. This is a grass-roots effort,” McCarter said in a statement. “Exercising our ballot initiative rights should not be dependent on getting financial backing from corporations.”
Federal judge Michael J. McShane denied McCarter’s demand on Monday. McShane ruled that McCarter was not “reasonably diligent” in gathering signatures regardless of the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the ruling, McShane wrote that petitioners did not demonstrate the initiative had a “reasonable likelihood of success” based on their efforts.
“Holding one rally, collecting less than 400 signatures, and hosting a Facebook page does not constitute reasonable diligence when compared with other initiative proponents,” McShane said in the ruling.
“Move Oregon’s Border” follows another recent unsuccessful secession attempts around the country.
In 2016, the “Oregon Secession from the United States Initiative” called on Oregon Governor Kate Brown and the Oregon state legislature to secede from the United States.
It would have done so, “alone or in conjunction with” a host of other states and Canadian provinces to form a new country.
“Calexit”, a secessionist measure in California, also failed to make the 2016 November ballot.
The U.S. Constitution does not provide a means for states to secede.
