Does America have too many states?

[dkxdjy]

America has 50 states and approximately 330 million people, making an average of 6.6 million people per state. For reference, around 110 countries have populations greater than this (and 85 less).

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Isn't this an apples-to-oranges comparison?

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Just a wrong set of states. Merge the small ones. Split the big ones.

[The Mikado]

America has 50 states and approximately 330 million people, making an average of 6.6 million people per state. For reference, around 110 countries have populations greater than this (and 85 less).

There's a reason you could argue that there's too few states, but that isn't one of them. You could use that same data to say that LA County, California is way too big and unwieldy and the inland two thirds of it should be its own separate new county, or that Cook County, Illinois should be shrunk down to a city-county consolidated with Chicago with the rest of Cook its own new county, or etc.

[Chips]

I don't really think so.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Pretty obviously yes. No-one can argue with a straight face that Wyoming is most efficiently administered by its own state government for less than 600k people. I would like to see the same arguments made for splitting up NYC into 10 different state governments including 4 or 5 for Brooklyn all with their own federal delegations. The city is twice the size in population of the median US state and that needs addressing!

US federalism would work much better with regions as states, as those are the actual economic and cultural agglomerations. New England as one state, Appalachia as one state, the Mountain West as one state etc..

Most of the Northeastern states are anachronistic hangovers from 17th century colonial government. Most of the Western states are creations of blatant Republican gerrymandering.

[PSOL]

Generally the entire map needs to be redrawn to actually represent the diverse population groups in the United States.

[Del Tachi]

Pretty obviously yes. No-one can argue with a straight face that Wyoming is most efficiently administered by its own state government for less than 600k people. I would like to see the same arguments made for splitting up NYC into 10 different state governments including 4 or 5 for Brooklyn all with their own federal delegations. The city is twice the size in population of the median US state and that needs addressing!

US federalism would work much better with regions as states, as those are the actual economic and cultural agglomerations. New England as one state, Appalachia as one state, the Mountain West as one state etc..

Most of the Northeastern states are anachronistic hangovers from 17th century colonial government. Most of the Western states are creations of blatant Republican gerrymandering.

None of this is even remotely true, lol

[politicallefty]

Many of the current states are derived out of slavery or partisanship. We shouldn't have two Dakotas. If we had to, it should've been divided into East and West. I think West Virginia is probably unconstitutional, particularly if secession was never deemed legal.

[RINO Tom]

No, and we don't have too few, either.  Short of something truly monumental and irresolvable (e.g., West Virginia splitting off to remain with the Union during a literal civil war about something as fundamental as the right to enslave a human being...), states should make it work as they change.  Illinois of 1870, 1920, 1950, 1980 and today are INCREDIBLY different states.  Having state secession movements become a serious thing based on flavor-of-the-decade cultural or political divides is completely unsustainable.  While, right now, a "Chicago(land?) vs. Downstate" divide might be an obvious division point, that wasn't always the case and it isn't guaranteed to be the case in 20-30 years.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Pretty obviously yes. No-one can argue with a straight face that Wyoming is most efficiently administered by its own state government for less than 600k people. I would like to see the same arguments made for splitting up NYC into 10 different state governments including 4 or 5 for Brooklyn all with their own federal delegations. The city is twice the size in population of the median US state and that needs addressing!

US federalism would work much better with regions as states, as those are the actual economic and cultural agglomerations. New England as one state, Appalachia as one state, the Mountain West as one state etc..

Most of the Northeastern states are anachronistic hangovers from 17th century colonial government. Most of the Western states are creations of blatant Republican gerrymandering.

None of this is even remotely true, lol

Not an argument.

The US should look at subnational divisions like Queensland and Ontario as models.

[Del Tachi]

Pretty obviously yes. No-one can argue with a straight face that Wyoming is most efficiently administered by its own state government for less than 600k people. I would like to see the same arguments made for splitting up NYC into 10 different state governments including 4 or 5 for Brooklyn all with their own federal delegations. The city is twice the size in population of the median US state and that needs addressing!

US federalism would work much better with regions as states, as those are the actual economic and cultural agglomerations. New England as one state, Appalachia as one state, the Mountain West as one state etc..

Most of the Northeastern states are anachronistic hangovers from 17th century colonial government. Most of the Western states are creations of blatant Republican gerrymandering.

None of this is even remotely true, lol

Not an argument.

The US should look at subnational divisions like Queensland and Ontario as models.

Queensland has a population of only 5 million people, which (as OP points out) is less populous than the average U.S. state.  If less populous subnational units have "less efficient" governments as you imply, then Queensland is governed worse than the typical U.S. state.     

And Ontario is home to ~40% of Canada's entire population.  A U.S. state of +130M would be laughable ungovernable under our system of federal government.

So I'm hard-pressed to see what "model" qualities these two places, lol

U.S. states are natural, constituent federal entities created by the people who live there.  Throughout American history, states have regularly changed their borders (the Mississippi Territory was originally organized from the State of Georgia, for example.)  This process is ongoing and open to democratic influence.  That we haven't seen any recent, significant changes in the make of the 50 states is only proof that most people are happy with the current alignment.

[dkxdjy]

I do agree with Reply #2 in that it does feel illogical that some states will have many of these metros though while others have none (for example Texas will have Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin, while Arkansas, a neighboring state, will have Little Rock as its largest metro, which is far smaller). This very well does support arguments for splitting up Texas (and other large states) or for merging Arkansas (and other small states) with neighboring states, as suggested.

One argument for splitting up existing states would be to make it easier to admit states and give representation to groups of people in places that are not that populous. For example, if Guam decided to become a state, an argument that would definitely come up is that it is so much smaller than existing US states (which could mean disproportionate representation), but this would be less of a concern if existing US states were smaller.

However, if there are too many states, this could lead to additional bureaucracy and general confusion; for example, if more and more people need to cross state lines for work, this could force them to familiarize themselves with multiple states' laws or traditions, which could be inconvenient.

I think it would be pretty hard to refer to say Canada and Australia as mentioned above as models because the U.S. has a lot more people (Canada has less people than California, and Australia less than Texas), and also because the population distributions are really different. In particular, the issue with Ontario being 40% of the country population is difficult for Canada to avoid since 15% of the Canadian population is in the Toronto metro anyway, but the U.S. doesn't have this extreme imbalance  (NYC is around 6%, and there are plenty of reasonably large metros are distributed all across the country).

[Ferguson97]

We really don't need two Dakotas.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

If less populous subnational units have "less efficient" governments as you imply

Yes, obviously. Too many politicians and administrative barriers are inefficient and can only be justified if there are meaningful economic and cultural distinctions between subnational divisions. But these don't map onto currently existing state divisions:



Why for example does the New York megalopolis sprawl over 3 or 4 different state governments with differing regimes of taxation, transport and policing? It makes no sense. (And yes, I would support splitting California in two, with one state centred on the Bay Area and one on LA.)

U.S. states are natural, constituent federal entities created by the people who live there.  Throughout American history, states have regularly changed their borders (the Mississippi Territory was originally organized from the State of Georgia, for example.)  This process is ongoing and open to democratic influence.  That we haven't seen any recent, significant changes in the make of the 50 states is only proof that most people are happy with the current alignment.

OK? Argumentum ad populum. Most people don't have a considered view on the makeup of state-level government other than status quo bias.

I think it would be pretty hard to refer to say Canada and Australia as mentioned above as models because the U.S. has a lot more people (Canada has less people than California, and Australia less than Texas), and also because the population distributions are really different. In particular, the issue with Ontario being 40% of the country population is difficult for Canada to avoid since 15% of the Canadian population is in the Toronto metro anyway, but the U.S. doesn't have this extreme imbalance  (NYC is around 6%, and there are plenty of reasonably large metros are distributed all across the country).

I mentioned Canada and Australia because these are countries with some of the largest subnational divisions in the world by area and are administered fairly well, when the rationale for e.g. splitting up the Dakotas was that the territory was too large for a single state government. But looking at Ontario I don't see an argument for why the entire Mountain West wouldn't work as a single state. The point was to highlight the ridiculousness of Wyoming having its own state government for 600,000 people. In fact it was admitted as a state with a population of just over 60,000, when Australia still won't admit the far larger Northern Territory with four times that number.

If there are 3 arguments for why Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut are best served by having their own state government: population, size and status quo bias, none of them are rational.

[MarkD]

No. Fifty states is a perfectly round and even number.

The only reason I can think of for why we might reduce the number of states is if something drastic were to happen to one of the smallest states -- take Wyoming as the example, since it's the smallest -- and because of massive economic downturn, unique to that one state, a couple hundred thousand residents were to pack up and move away, reducing its population to the point in which it no longer had at least half of an average congressional district. In the newest census, Wyoming's population is 577,719, whereas the average congressional district, nationwide, is 761,169. Half of the average is about 380,00. If Wyoming were to lose about 200,000 people, that would put it below half of the average. And if the economy in Wyoming was so wrecked that there was no sign that it could possibly turn around and start growing again, then that would mean, to me, that it was time to merge Wyoming with an adjacent state, like Montana (if any adjacent state would be willing to merge with an economic disaster).

[muon2]

I don't think there's anything magical about the number 50 for states (eg PR could be state 51). I also enjoy the exercise of redrawing the states as a hypothetical exercise and have done so in detail on threads in the past.

In reality the question of whether the US has too many or too few states is very different than asking the same question about counties. Counties are not sovereign entities within their states, but states are within the federal system of the US. If states wish to split, merge or change boundaries, there's a well defined process in the Constitution. However, it seems that asking small states to be merged with larger ones to make government more representative would be like asking whether small nations in the EU should give up their representation on the Council of the EU to make that body more representative.

[beesley]

It could have too many or too few, depending on what role you want states to have. The main reasons to keep states as they are are purely cultural.

[All Along The Watchtower]

No, we need more states because we need more election maps.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

In reality the question of whether the US has too many or too few states is very different than asking the same question about counties. Counties are not sovereign entities within their states, but states are within the federal system of the US. If states wish to split, merge or change boundaries, there's a well defined process in the Constitution. However, it seems that asking small states to be merged with larger ones to make government more representative would be like asking whether small nations in the EU should give up their representation on the Council of the EU to make that body more representative.

Not really. Does there exist no federal army? Does Maine have its own currency and can shut its borders to other Americans at no notice? Is federal policy run by all the state governors getting together in a smoke filled room and hashing out a deal? US-style federalism is an extreme minority uber-centralist pipedream in European politics. The German constitutional court recently delayed ratification of the EU's stimulus package: it would be like if the Texas Supreme Court had the power to declare the Biden stimulus unconstitutional. Or if Ursula von der Leyen could sieze control of the Polish army and direct it to protect gay people from harassment or something.

A much better comparison as above is with Australian or Canadian federalism, which would suggest a smaller number of larger states.

[Ferguson97]

[Dr. MB]

Pretty obviously yes. No-one can argue with a straight face that Wyoming is most efficiently administered by its own state government for less than 600k people. I would like to see the same arguments made for splitting up NYC into 10 different state governments including 4 or 5 for Brooklyn all with their own federal delegations. The city is twice the size in population of the median US state and that needs addressing!

US federalism would work much better with regions as states, as those are the actual economic and cultural agglomerations. New England as one state, Appalachia as one state, the Mountain West as one state etc..

Most of the Northeastern states are anachronistic hangovers from 17th century colonial government. Most of the Western states are creations of blatant Republican gerrymandering.

None of this is even remotely true, lol

Not an argument.

The US should look at subnational divisions like Queensland and Ontario as models.

For every Ontario there's seven New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut.

[Meclazine for Israel]

No,

You can have as many states as you like.

You just need a federal government that defines clear boundaries for basic crap like:

Wearing a mask
Lockdown protocols
Owning a gun
Paying taxes
Claiming welfare as appropriate
Immigration standards

Once you have your basic sh**t sorted, then you can be called United because you are United.

[Red Velvet]

Yes, I think the good number for US would be between 35-40

But with drastically redrawn borders in order to fit the population, geography, vegetation, etc real characteristics. Some states are just random squares.

[Schiff for Senate]

Just a wrong set of states. Merge the small ones. Split the big ones.

Yes, exactly. I don't know why Dakota was split into two states to begin with; ND and SD should be merged into one large state (called Dakota or something like that). Conversely, Northern California and Southern California should be split into two different states (I would define North CA as everything north of Kern, San Bernardino and San Luis Obispo Counties's northern border and South CA as encompassing the residue of California). In retrospect, I would do the same for New Jersey, separating Camden, Atlantic, Gloucester, Salem, Cumberland and Cape May Counties from the rest of the state. Lastly, I would split Cook, Will, DuPage, Lake, Kane, Kendall and McHenry Counties from the rest of Illinois - Chicagoland currently dominates IL and voters in South and West Illinois are essentially un-represented at a statewide level, and voters there are basically disenfranchised, since most of IL's votes come from Chicagoland.