Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution:<p>“The legislature, in cooperation with the properly constituted authority of any adjoining state, is empowered to change, alter, and redefine the state boundaries, such change, alteration and redefinition to become effective only upon approval of the Congress of the United States.”<p>Essentially they’d need approval from WV, MD, and an act of Congress. Highly unlikely.<p>This issue is one of the many defects in democracies: your power sometimes rests in the way somebody drew a border a long time ago.
Fun fact: they would be moving from the state with the highest median household income to the state with the lowest. I suppose this would only make Maryland richer by that metric.<p>Personally, I’d rather cut my own foot off with a rusty steak knife than live in West Virginia, which has basically nothing going for it except some decent wilderness. It doesn’t help that I have relatives there who love the confederate flag and decorate the back of their truck with a few iron crosses. Maybe they’d fit in among the residents of western Maryland.
Tangential, but instead of making DC into a new state, why not just absorb it into Maryland? Virginia already absorbed the part of DC rhombus west of the Potomac.
Same kind of thing happened in Virginia last year. But if this had happened (somehow) then Virginia wouldn't have a competitive campaign for governor this year<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/09/politics/west-virginia-republicans-push-vexit/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/09/politics/west-virginia-republ...</a>
This type of stuff happens all the time- Northern Colorado has asked to join Wyoming, there have been various schemes to join parts of Appalachia together, etc. It all comes down to rural areas trying to combine with other rural areas, or occasionally, urban areas trying to expand.
"Western Maryland lawmakers have periodically raised concerns in the Maryland General Assembly that their part of the state is different from the rest of the state, with a more conservative political outlook"<p>this type of political huckstering happens periodically between US states, most famously the exhausting routine of Californian politicians demanding the state be carved into a north and south (with Los Angeles curiously a northern city in most maps.)<p>When your brand of political ideal is so toxic or disinteresting to a state that you seek to bifurcate the state itself, you're missing the point of political discourse and abdicating the role of statesman.
I am not sure I understand the goals here. Gerrymandering 2.0?<p>WV lost a seat in the 2020 census. Would move seats from Maryland to WV. From Blue to Red.<p>I like to idea just to square off WV's eastern panhandle. It would look nice on a map with a flat top.
> a media market based in Pittsburgh<p>Pittsburgh, PA? On a map the western parts of Maryland seem vaguely as close to Pittsburgh as they are to Baltimore. Even if they were closer to Pittsburgh, PA why would media in Pittsburgh, PA cover events in western Maryland (since it's still kind of far away and Pittsburgh isn't that big a city)?<p>I also don't know what they mean by "media market" being in Pittsburgh, again, if they mean PA.<p>I Google and can't find a Pittsburgh, MD so I assume they are talking about PA. But I'm still confused.
Anyone got a mirror? The Baltimore Sun is one of those US local media outlets that block Europeans because of how much they "highly value" them.<p>EDIT: It's syndicated to msn: <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/western-maryland-lawmakers-ask-west-virginia-officials-to-e2-80-98consider-adding-us-e2-80-99-to-their-state/ar-AAPNBZz" rel="nofollow">https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/western-maryland-lawmakers...</a>