Thanks for the well-written, thoughtful reply.
I'm not convinced by the "poor representation" argument though. Every democracy I've ever heard of has some kind of "proportional representation" baked-in to it which rather naturally means that regions with gazillions of people in them will get more legislative attention than regions that are sparsely populated. How else would one organize it that would give farmers and other rural dwellers an equal voice as all those city folk? Allocation of representation by square mileage? Maybe there are tweaks that are being done, or that could be done, but I haven't given the issue a lot of thought, maybe because I come from a tiny little state (both pop. & land area) and it's pretty much understood we wouldn't have the clout in D.C. that, say, MA would have, and that always seemed like "well of course, how else would it work and still be fair?" even if we were overlooked or, as you say "got the shaft" intermittently.
If people in E. WA were so concerned about not getting represented, maybe they could look to the kind of people they consistently elect. For example, CMR, who never met an orange ass she didn't want to kiss but has done virtually nothing of note over her long time in office. Then there's the premium Christofascist and domestic terrorist Matt Shea.
An investigative report commissioned by the House, issued on December 1, 2019, found that Shea "participated in an act of domestic terrorism against the United States", organized and supported "three armed conflicts of political violence", and advocated replacing the government with a theocracy and "the killing of all males who do not agree." A former ally of Shea provided documents showing that Shea and his supporters were planning to seize control of the region after the outbreak of civil war, installing Shea as governmental leader in order to institute "constitutional changes" to "sanctify to Jesus Christ".
And finally, off the top of my head, there's the soon-to-be-former-mayor of Spokane Nadine Woodward who's done fuck-all in office but is happy to cozy up on stage in public with the likes of Shea and others of his ilk. You're saying that E. WA is wanting "good" representation, but look at who voters are electing, over and over again. Are they electing them for promising to go up against Big Ag Tech on behalf of farmers? I think not.
I'd love to find out that it was true that these right-wing secessionist-type fantasies were motivated mostly by sensible economic concerns (like right-to-repair, which I'm totally in favor of from what (little) I know of it) and environmental protection concerns (i.e. scientific management of water supplies with the good of the people and not corporate profits in mind, and with an front-and-center acknowledgment of anthropogenic global warming, including global warming contributed to, potentially, by farming practices - again not my area of expertise). I'd love to hear that, in the eyes of the aggrieved secessionists in the PNW, it's 110% fine for old Tim and Jim to hook up down in, say, Rockford, and live happy lives together, but instead what we get is domestic terrorism at "gay friendly" churches.
As you say, the secessionists are primarily, as far as I can tell, E.OR/E.WA/ID Christofascists looking to establish a theocracy. If they were just regular, non-theocratic, non-totalitarian, anti-book-ban, pro-science, thoughtful people who weren't dripping with hatred about Those (other) People, I might be be able to listen to them and reason with them and those allegedly-"over represented" people in the west might be happy to do the same. As it stands now though, they're just seditionists who are hoping to "get ahead" through violence and intimidation.
Notes:
- The very idea of re-drawing these state boundaries seems unworkable in a great many ways, but if one were to think about it, I wonder how the seditionists would propose to treat all the Natives and their lands? What if the tribes were to give the new state idea a thumbs-down, which I could easily imagine happening. Would the seditionists advocate taking tribal lands by force (again)?
- I've lived in WA state since 1990 and E. WA for the last 20 yrs.
https://ipleak.net/ is one that I use.