Only if they make Weed the capital.
In addition to the objections already raised… although the Constitution doesn’t spell it out, I suspect any such merger would be approved (if it were approved at all) by Act of Congress, which would require the signature of the President to become law. The admission of states is done by Act, and this after all would be a roughly analogous change in the relationship of a state (or territory) to the Union. If I were President, I would veto such an Act. Armstrong (despite its noble name - did you have Lance or Neil in mind?) would be an unwieldy, behemoth state, freakishly large compared to the remaining states.
Proper approval would be the consent of congress. My point is that a federal court might rule it unconstitutional for two states to act as if they were one without congressional approval. Of course, that leaves open the question of what the remedy would be.
Once you start down this road, any scenario can be set up of equal validity. Forty nine states could get together and form one giant superstate leaving Nebraska isolated in the middle to starve. True, Nebraska would have as many senators as the superstate, but the Vice President gets to break ties and the party that the superstate voted for would elect the Vice President.
It’s exactly as valid and exactly as plausible.
If you’re going to take the extreme case, why not go all the way?
Did you think we’d forget that the Constitution prohibits the Electoral College from casting its votes for a President and Vice President from the same state? With only two states left, all the Presidents would be from Superstate (they wouldn’t want to give up the Oval Office) and all the Vice Presidents would be from Nebraska. With the Senate tied at 2-2, the Nebraskan VP’s would rule the Senate.
Your nefarious plan to increase the power of the Omaha Cabal has been exposed.
**Armstrong **was inspired by Neil. A guy that isn’t gong to offend anyone from a political perspective. And one of my personal heroes.
Originally this was an exercise to see if the concept of Armstrong could be created, and if not, what would be the legal reason. As I got into the question more, the more interested I got into the possibilities.
The logistics alone would be a nightmare, but if you take the states I mentioned in post 44, the state of Armstrong would completely hose the rest of the remaining states. For one, the states I list would be contiguous, leaving other states as “islands”. Armstrong would stretch from coast to coast, as well as north to south.
It would encompass most major coastal areas, as well as most naval ports and bases. It would have most of the large vacation destinations. It would have to work out things like a uniform state tax, laws and a constitution, but that would be doable.
If Armstrong could be created, would it bring about the demise of the United States, even though it is a state itself?
I think it’s an interesting exercise.
When you look at it from the perspective of the Civil War, it wouldn’t have worked since the country wasn’t completely defined yet. The slave states could not have created their own state to “break away” without secession, since the population. power. and money lay in the north.
Several states needs to be merged.
New England for example (Maine, New hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island.) If these states merged, it would have the population of the state of Texas. Or have two states, (Mass, Ct. RI as one state and Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire as the other state) which would be about the size of Tennessee.
**Maryland and Delaware **need to merge. Delaware is basically a dinky state next to a larger, but just as dinky of a state.
Wyoming and Montana, because of population and a similiar western culture
North and South Dakota. Why is there a North and South Dakota? Two sparsley populated farm states that could be one state.
On the other hand, some states could be broken up and sub divided, for example:
Make New York City a state. New York City has more people than about 20 US states. The CITY is much different than the rest of the STATE. New York State is very rural with small towns.
California should be split in two, Northern California and Southern California. Los Angeles MSA should also become a state.
And then there was the State of Franklin in part of North Carolina, then Tennessee, and then NC again. They still have a bank.
Mine, too - and, I would proudly add, he’s an Ohioan!
Captain Midnight, you may have heard that Fernando Wood, the pro-Southern mayor of NYC at the outbreak of the Civil War, proposed in a speech that his city - which had strong trading ties to the South - secede from the Union, too. Lincoln laughed it off, saying, “I don’t think the front door is ready to detach from the rest of the house just yet,” and nothing ever came of it. This was at a time, pre-income tax, when most of the Federal budget came from tariffs imposed on cargoes coming through the Port of New York.