How do I display a border for a region (such as New England, or the Southeastern United States) without displaying the individual state (county/country/province) boundaries inside the region?
Use the Split Background Line and Merge Background Lines options available by right-clicking on the desired object(s). The idea is to split the borders at the vertex points where one border object (such as a state) meets an adjoining border object, then to merge all of the newly created individual lines to create the boundary for the region you desire. Finally, go back and delete the interior borders lines that you do not wish to display. See Converting Background Lines in the help files for more information on splitting and merging lines.
July 3, 2012