Is It Time To Realign State Borders?

Authored by John Kudla via American Thinker,

Let’s pretend you are a liberal living in a red state.  If you feel aggrieved about the condition of the world and believe that conservatives are to blame, you can find a few like-minded souls, print up some signs covered in half-clever phrases, and go protest.  In most cases, unless you chain yourself to a railing on the courthouse steps or attack the police, you will usually be ignored.

On the flip side, let’s pretend you are a conservative living in a deep blue state.  If you don’t like the school policy, E.V. mandates, high electricity prices, or restrictive gun laws, and you dare to complain, not only will you not be ignored, but you might be harassed, shunned, or canceled.  Your solution to the hard blue insanity is a four-letter word: move.

Now let’s pretend you live in a state with a blue megalopolis somewhere over the horizon, but you don’t want to move.  Let’s also pretend you have lived in your community all of your life and have roots there — a job or a farm or a business that would be difficult to replicate somewhere else.  Why should you suffer because once upon a midnight dreary, councilors to a long dead king or a few drunk senators drew a line on a map that ignored rational boundaries?

Generally speaking, I don’t have a problem with people living the way they want to.  That is called freedom.  However, I object to some of our more right-leaning or left-leaning citizens forcing their ideas on everyone else, then treating those who disagree with them as second-class citizens.  In some cases, this has prompted states to heavily gerrymander congressional districts, which disenfranchises both liberal and conservative voters.  One solution is to adjust state boundaries to more adequately reflect local political values.

Ever since the founding of the republic, various groups and political movements have sought to redraw state boundaries.  Some have been successful.  Maine was originally part of Massachusetts, and the states of Kentucky and West Virginia were created from land originally part of Virginia.  Other partitions to existing boundaries have been suggested, but none has been adopted.  The reason is that the Constitution requires both the blessings of the partitioned state and the U.S. Congress.

Ask yourself a simple question.  Why would any state governor or legislature willingly give up territory if it is not forced to?  The serfs — excuse me, taxpayers — there help balance the state budget.  How they feel about their lives or the number of potholes in their roads is secondary to ensuring that state budgets are met and the state programs, even those for non-citizens, continue.

Despite the obstacles, secession movements continue.  Let’s look at three of the more recent secession ideas.

In 2014, residents of western Maryland, reportedly unhappy with taxes and gun control policy, started signing petitions to secede from Maryland and form a new state.  Later in 2021, Republican lawmakers in Allegany, Garrett, and Washington counties in Maryland sent a letter to the West Virginia legislature asking if the Mountain State would be willing to annex them.

The Maryland panhandle, an artifact of English colonial land grants, is a mountainous area more similar to West Virginia than the rest of Maryland.  The three counties have a combined population of just over a quarter of a quarter million.  That is probably not enough to take a congressional seat from Maryland or give one to West Virginia.  Will it change the U.S. political structure if these counties are allowed to switch states?  Not really.

The state of Oregon is divided almost in half by the Cascade Mountain Range.  The majority of the population lives on the western or Pacific Coast side of the mountains, either in the city of Portland or towns in the Willamette Valley.  In 2021, five counties in eastern Oregon, unhappy with the liberal state government, voted to take steps to secede from Oregon and join Idaho.

By 2024, a total of thirteen Oregon counties had voted to join Idaho.  The population in these counties is roughly 240,000, or about 5.5% of Oregon’s population — again, probably not enough to change the number of congressional seats between the states.

A third secession movement is active in Illinois.  Since 2011, more than one attempt has been made to separate the city of Chicago from the rest of Illinois or individual counties from the state.  The issue here is the dominance of Chicago and Chicago politics over the rest of Illinois.  As of 2024, 33 counties had voted to secede, about a third of the state’s counties.

In 2025, lawmakers in Indiana discussed annexing those counties, although only twenty-seven of them are contiguous with the Indiana border.  The others are on the western side of Illinois and would be a better fit with Missouri.  The twenty-seven counties represent nearly half a million residents.  This would almost certainly take a congressional seat from Illinois and add one to Indiana.

Besides liberal political values, another reason people are moving from blue states or seeking to join red states is that blue states typically have higher tax burdens than red states.  Call it an issue of affordability. 

There is an easy way to check this.  Let’s take the median income in the U.S., which was roughly $84,000 in 2024, multiply it by the average tax burden in the blue state of origin, do the same for the red state destination, and then subtract the two numbers.

The following results are based on a combination of income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes.  If the Oregon counties join Idaho, residents earning $84,000 would save about $250 per year, or about 0.3 percent of their income.  If the Illinois counties join Indiana, their residents would save over $750 per year or about 0.9 percent of their income.  And if the three Maryland counties joined West Virginia, residents there would save about $924 per year or about 1.1 percent of their income.  Remember, these are ballpark numbers and will change depending on income and other individual circumstances.

As the country approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, perhaps it is time to consider a constitutional amendment to facilitate changes to state boundaries.  After all, most of our state boundaries were arbitrary to begin with.

Counties wishing to become a separate state would have to follow the rules for statehood.  Imagine Chicago as the 51st state, along with New York City plus Long Island as the 52nd.  Upstate New York and downstate Illinois could then breathe a sigh of relief.

Until then, you can still move.

On a similar note, I hear the Canadian province of Alberta is thinking about leaving Canada.  Maybe Trump can talk the Canadians into a straight-up swap of Alberta for Minnesota.  It couldn’t hurt to try.