Plan B: Divide the USA Into Three

[Jamie in Chile]

Map: Presidential election results: Live map of 2020 electoral votes

A quick look at the map of the 2020 election results by state shows how this would work with a Western blue nation (WB), a central red nation (CR) and a North-Eastern blue one (NE). I think each nation has to be fully connected without parts of the other nation inside it (contiguous). To achieve this, not every swing state can have a vote.

A Western, blue state would contain as a minimum California, Oregon and Washington. Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and probably also Colorado would all get to vote for their preferred nation. If Arizona went red and New Mexico blue, then the southern part of Arizona (which is in any case democrat voting) would have to stay with WB.

The South East is tricky. If you let each state vote you would not likely be able to have only three contiguous nations. One solution is to just make a deal that Georgia, which Biden very narrowly won in 2020, goes to CR and North Carolina, which Trump very narrowly won, goes to NE. Alternative is you have a vote in Georgia and democrats agree that if Georgia votes red then Florida and South Carolina are also red without a vote and North Carolina goes to a vote, while Republicans agree that if Georgia votes blue then both North and South Carolina are blue without a vote and Florida then goes to a vote (read that last sentence again while looking at the map linked above).

The lakes region is also tricky. But I think you can just go with the map from the 2020 election and build some new roads and train tracks across lakes Michigan and Erie, as well as boats for transport. This solution requires that CR accepts that it will only get a small portion of those lakes – just the Indiana and Ohio lake shore. Given this, NE would actually be a contiguous nation (including water territory).

The two blue states combined would probably have less than half of the territory, perhaps less than half of the population, and maybe about half of the economy size, depending on how the votes pan out.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Some downsides to this plan: (and hence why I don't currently favour it)
--The blue/red city/rural division is perhaps larger than the blue/red state division. The three countries will still have a lot of people feeling like they are stranded in the wrong nation. However there would likely be at least political stability in each nation.
--There would be a huge cost to this, it would be inevitably be horrendously expensive and consume the government's time and society's energy, to the detriment of many other issues. It would like what happened with Brexit, but perhaps much worse. (However, things can be made much better by only making a legal, judicial, political and military separation, at least at first. It should be agreed no immigration control at the new borders for a while - maybe 2-3 years and no trade tarrifs or regulations or trade related border checks, total free trade for a while - maybe 5-10 years.)
--Two more nuclear nations would be created increasing the risk of nuclear proliferation and war
--If the current divisiveness is temporary, this is an overly drastic solution that might persist for centuries to solve a problem that might be gone in 10-20 years
--The separation of the USA could lead to a stronger China and Russia, which would be bad for the world as long as they are still controlled by authoritarian governments

Plus points:
--Everyone gets what they want in many areas. Everyone can pass their own abortion and health care rulings. The two blue nations would eventually end up with European style good quality public healthcare, for example.
--Possible reduction in divisions, riots etc
--Eliminates the chance of civil war (and I think unlikely the new countries would go to war with each other)

I think the democrats and republicans should agree the outline of this plan and have it in their back pocket incase we have a disputed election in November 2024.

At the moment, the American people would not support this idea but things can change.

I think Trump and Zuckerberg can take the largest share of the blame that we are even having this discussion. But at the very least it doesn't seem to make sense to dismiss this as a completely silly idea. Not any more.

 

[Lou]

I had first heard of this kind of plan with California, Oregon and Washington would secede from the union in 2016.
then I read this.

Is Russia Behind a Secession Effort in California? - The Atlantic

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Time for a divorce? The US is so bitterly divided between red & blue factions that some want it to split into two nations — RT Opinion

RT is owned and controlled by the Russian government. Of course, Russia would love to see divisions and states seceding.

Another option is to split the USA into three parts but retain it as one nation with one military and one central government in Washington. But give each one a regional government with substantial autonomy. Each of the three autonomous regions would be free to pass its own levels of taxation, and own systems of education and health. In fact, the Western and Eastern blue states might just join forces and agree that the lawmaking process applies to both.

The central red autonomous region would have far less gun control, limited public healthcare, no critical race theory in schools, lower taxation, and abortion only allowed in the first term.

The blue regions would have strict gun control, strong public healthcare and education, higher taxes, second term abortion and so on.

The blue regions could pass carbon fee and dividend leading to higher fossil fuel price. Or they could ban new oil and gas digs, or ban the use of coal by an earlier date. This would require some border controls or trade taxation, however.

A two-tiered approach could be better than 50 states passing different laws.

You would have something like the supreme court in each of either 2 (or 3) autonomous regions, as well as something like a regional senate. The federal senate and federal supreme court would still exist, but it would only rule on certain issues. In practice, these federal institutions would become less powerful

The federal government would still control the military and international relations, but world leaders would also be invited to visit each region.

This would be very roughly similar to the situation of Scotland, which gets to pass a lot of its own laws, but is also part of the UK.

 

[Sax]

Our divides might have originated in geography but they're not about that anymore. Media bubbles are the new borders.

We might need a solution from sci-fi. In China Mievelle's The City and The City two nations occupy the same geography and the citizens of each just pretend not to see each other.