US becomes empire, with 1 State given supremacy. Which state would you trust?

[Blue3]

Let's say the US is to become a traditional empire. One of the 50 current states is to become the central state of the empire... laws made by its natural-born citizens*** are enforced on the entire country, replacing the federal government, and the other state governments have their powers greatly reduced to the status of territories/colonies.

Which state would you trust most with this power?


*** Natural-born citizens of the state chosen are only residents who were born there to current residents and lived there consistently at least 18 years. And if you move away for more than 3 years for non-military reasons, then you lose voting privileges. And if you are allowed to move back (becoming a new resident in the state chosen to be the imperial center would be difficult) you must wait 18 years as a resident in that state before being allowed to vote (and as said, must have been born there to current residents). And even if you don't technically move your permanent address to another state, you are considered to have "moved away" if you spend more than 90 days (not necessarily back-to-back) outside of the state within a year.

Basically, the point of explaining this for this brainstorm is, simply moving to that state won't give you power to vote. Nor would "anchor babies." And if you stay away from the physical land for too long, if you were lucky enough to be born to residents of it and in it, you lose those privileges.





So picture the current populations of each of these states, and their descendants, ruling over us in the other 49 states. Which state would you trust most? Which state has the most consistently successfully-administrated government and policies in the present era that's applicable to the rest of the country? Which population would you trust the most, and seems to have the most reasonable system for legislation and representation?

For example, if you pick California, that means the rest of the country would be subject to whatever natural-born Californians decide in their propositions and referendums, as well as their state house. If you pick Massachusetts, they have a much more limited and different process for referendum, and who the natural-born citizens of Massachusetts choose to be their Governor and State Legislators would be most important.

And even if some states have the exact same system of government when it comes to referendums, how they choose their legislators are different (and how many legislators they choose, think of the number of state legislators in New Hampshire), how much power they give their governor is different (some governors are basically figureheads), how many other statewide officers they elect are different. And obviously some states are more likely to enact conservative policies, some states are more likely to enact progressive policies.

Take all of these factors into account when choosing the state that you'd find most acceptable to ruling us all. I'll allow up to 3 choices to see if, even if we can't agree on a first choice, perhaps most of us admire how another state is run that we all rank as second or third on our lists.

[Blue3]

What about people who are longtime residents but aren't natural born or "anchor babies"? Seems kind of crazy that someone whose lived in a state for 70 years still isn't considered a resident but could be of another state.

Let's say this hypothetical were to go into effect on March 1, 2019. If they are a resident before March 1, they're considered natural-born, and so will their direct descendants if they were also born there.

As as I described, after this change, it would be very difficult for anyone not from there to move to the chosen state due to new regulations.

It's to prevent people from moving to the state in order to gain power, even if they have to be very patient about it for decades.

This obviously isn't fair, but it's not too different from many traditional empires.



The question is: which state (its people and government system) would you trust with all this power?