Red State, Blue State, No State, New State?

Written by: rich^kolker on Jul 19, 2006 8:52 AM EDT

There is nothing more frustrating than being a blue stater in a red state, or, I would guess, vice versa. Or a blue county person in a red state, where no matter how hard you work, successfully, locally it has no affect on statewide politics. It is the underlying cause of lack of voter turnout and political participation, the idea that "no matter what I do, it means nothing." The blatant gerrymandering by both parties, from the GOP in Texas to the Democrats in Pennsylvania, in order to produce safe seats, just adds to that citizen frustration and non-participation.

So let me throw out for discussion an idea, at least for the state level frustrations. Is it time to redraw the states? After all, they are arbitrary, based on everything from 17th Century land grants to the results of various minor wars. They vary in population by a factor of 70 and physical size by a similar factor. They are much larger in population than any "founding father" could have imagined in 1789 when the Constitution was approved. They are often dysfunctional: Northern Virginia nothing like the the rural southwest, upstate New York very different from New York City (which is very different from the Long Island suburbs).

There is nothing magical about the number 50 or the borders of most states. The only thing that worries me about this idea is that the people who would implement it are the same gerrymandering partisans who have screwed up the system, but it's something worth thinking about.


So might be eliminating states altogether. As I said, they've become much larger than anything imagined at the founding of the country. It's an interesting question whether the degree of "middle management" they provide is worth the costs, but the Constitutional challenge that would pose is probably too great, even if we concluded it was a good idea.

More States? No States?

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