The following is part of my continued series of letters on potential candidates for the 51st state in the Union. This letter will focus on Cascadia, or Eastern Washington, where efforts to form a separate state or to join with the northern part of Idaho have occurred off and on since 1861. The first attempt was occurred in January of 1861 when members of the Washington Territory legislature voted on a proposal that was to be sent to Congress to create the “Territory of Walla Walla” which at the time was the biggest city in the territory.
Further attempts would be made by the “easterners” before Washington became a state in 1889 and even after it achieved statehood. On a side note, there was even one proposal in 1937 for King County which encompasses Seattle to become its own state. Interestingly, that proposal came from a state representative from one of the more rural counties at the time in Western Washington. The latest proposal to split the state in half came about in February of this year for a proposed eastern state named “Liberty” and has somewhat become an annual even in the Washington state legislature in recent years. The state of Liberty would encompass 20 eastern counties and have a population of 1.6 million people and a land area of over 46,000 square miles. This would well qualify it for representation in Congress if the proposals can get any real traction.
The issue driving this particular type of movement for a 51st state have to do with ones that occur in other states namely rural portions of states that are outvoted by more urban parts of a state when it comes to issues of taxation, resources and public policies. More stars could be added to the American flag but the process for achieving that would be much more complicated than the last time a state created from another state was admitted into the Union. Which was West Virginia in 1863.
A more achievable process in the near term would be for states to require supermajority thresholds for certain types of legislation in order to better include everyone’s input from all across a state. Also, better districting and adding some extra representatives and senators to state legislatures boundaries for those districts should be based more on county and city boundaries but there would have to be some modification of two Supreme Court decisions, Baker vs. Carr and Reynolds vs. Sims which established the one person, one vote for state legislative districting. Counties and cities while distinct communities that have a shared history are not independent entities as state are in the Union but instead creations of them and currently would not be entitled to equal representation no matter their population or size like the states are in the U.S. Senate.
