What if the US had 12 equal population states and a Parliament?

United State Free Parliament Party What would this reform of America do? How would the new map of America affect politics? How would a Parliamentary system change things?

Never going to happen. State pride is a huuuuuge thing in this country.

Genuine question: can you give a summary of the parliamentary system?

But if it decreases functions of the states, I don't think it will go through, save a fundamental restructuring of the government.

Forget state pride; reforming the government so completely when there's little reason or incentive to do so is going to make this a pipe dream. We're much more likely to have all our state legislatures switch to one house systems rather than have this happen. Doing something like that is costly.

James Ogle (California) - Parliamentary system advocate. is running for President under this platform.

I can see it happening, in theory, anyway - just merge regional state under a larger version of a state, provided that population of each mega-state ends up equal.

So, California would probably stay all by itself, as would New York, but that's just my gut feeling without looking up any numbers. Lots of the Prarie states would probably merge.

We'd finally get Cascadia, too (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montanna).

EDIT: Oh, sweet, a map! Yaaaaaay, Hawaii falls under Cascadia...! And so does Nevada. :/

So I was right - California and New York keep their individuality, and even Texas does. Interesting.

edited 2nd Dec '11 12:11:58 PM by pvtnum11

States (California, New York, and Texas stay as they are):

• New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont)
• New York (New York)
• North Atlantic (Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey)
• Mid Atlantic (Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina)
• South East (Florida and Georgia)
• South (Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Alabama, and Tennessee)
• Great Lakes (Indiana, Michigan and Ohio)
• Mid West (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin)
• Texas (Texas)
• South West (Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Utah)
• California (California)
• Pacific North West (Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming)

edited 2nd Dec '11 12:21:06 PM by secretist

Eh, I'd rather put Nebraska in Midwest than South West. Mostly because I'm not interested in merging with... well, any of those states.

I also oppose the plan because it would have only 24 Senators instead of our current 100. This would hurt the States.

How would it hurt the states as a whole? It would give incentives to small states to oppose merges.

I don't like this idea.

The current system has each state have two Senators. If you combined states, the merged states would have to share two Senators for all of them. Before the split, each combined state on the map would have from two to six to eight to ten to twelve to fourteen to twenty Senators in said territory dwindle to two.

edited 2nd Dec '11 1:17:02 PM by secretist

That would mean the New England states would have 2 senators instead of 12. But that's for merged states. It would not necessarily make states as a concept weaker.

Parliament? Why not just still call it Congress? They're the same thing, really.

Anyway, why would this be advocated? If it turns the US into a unitary/quasi-federal system (which works... not so good here), then that would be extremely terrible, considering the size and population of the US.

Missouri would split into two. St. Louis and Kansas City (the North) would go one way and the rest would go the other way.

It really is two different states. The cities' needs more or less get ignored by the rest (who run everything).

Yes, I realized that, but it's interesting to talk about.

Presumably, if we switched to a unitary system, we'd also increase the number of Senators in it. Because giving so much power to only fifty would result in an oligarchy. Also, I'm wondering how the whole "equal population" thing comes into effect. Would these states basically be redistricted every time the Census took place in order to ensure that the population of these states remained static? Which would make sense if we ended up going with the "representation according to population" method that the House of Representatives is based on.

We still have Reps, though.

Maybe have four Senators per Megastate...?

Interesting, if we overpacked the Senate with Senators, would that turn America into a Confederation basically?

How do you overpack a Senate with Senators? And no, assuming we retained the President as Head of State and Government, (As in, remaining contiguously the United States even if we would be a lesser number of states) we wouldn't be a Confederation.

What if we kept our number of states at fifty and gave each state 9 or more Senators to equalize the House and the Senate?

Senators would be watered down, I think. Since you only get two, they hold more sway. Right?

Is there such a thing as Conservation Of Political Ninjitsu?

My suggestion: don't elect Congressmen. Just have normal citizens represent the states.

Buscemi, unless you're picking by random draw, those people we vote for then become Congressmen because now that's their fucking job. And they're that even if they're picked by random draw. (And far more likely to do a bad job because they didn't choose to do it.)

Secretist; uh.. yeah, I don't think that would work. We'd end up with a crapload of Senators is all, given that the House is based upon population and the population of each state is constantly changing for a variety of reasons. We'd still have more Reps that Senators. Not to mention that they're pretty equal in terms of influence since all laws have to pass through both Houses before being a thing.

Hmmm... if the US became a unitary state, then there would be no need for a state-state. Unitary systems have power concentrated in the centre (i.e. Washington), with simply a huge mess of local authorities scattered around the nation.

It appears this new system is not at all a unitary state, if these are megastates.

Well, if the Reps are based on population, have five members per 500,000 people-constituency and use a Closed-List System for elections to said House. If it's a Parliament, then the head of state will be the leader of the largest party, and not separately elected as in the Congressional system.