A Modest Proposal

So called not so much because it's as offensive to the moral sensibilities as the original modest proposal, but just because it's not remotely modest in any way whatsoever. Anyway, here goes. In comparative con-law class this week, we've been talking about federalism (ad nauseum, one might say). One of Professor Calabresi's pet theories is that the number of sub-federal units in a federation is a very important factor in the strength of the federal structure. Too few states, he hypothesizes, and there is no cohesion: you get lots of secessionist movements and a weak central government. Too many, and the states disappear and the central government becomes a powerful behemoth. The U.S., Professor Calabresi thinks, has too many states, and this is a primary reason why we have lost our old, balanced "dual federalism." Canada, on the other hand, has too few, reflected in its damn-near-successful secessionist movement in Quebec. His typical counterexample is to wonder what would happen if the U.S. had four mega-states instead of the real fifty: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. Calabresi thinks that such a union would be quite likely to split up, and I think he might have a point.

But in considering that collection of mega-states, one of my first thoughts is, well, it's natural to make a New England state, but that's a slightly smaller level. So just for fun, since I've been playing with maps today anyway, I decided to try to clump the 48 American continental states into a natural-seeming smaller number of states. Here are my results:

New England = Maine + New Hampshire + Vermont + Massachusetts + Rhode Island + Connecticut, 21 seats
New York = New York, 27 seats
Pennsylvania = New Jersey + Pennsylvania, 30 seats
Virginia = Delaware + Maryland + Washington, D.C. Virginia + West Virginia, 24 seats
Carolina = North Carolina + South Carolina + Georgia, 34 seats
Florida = Florida, 27 seats
Mississippi = Alabama + Mississippi + Louisiana + Arkansas + Tennessee, 30 seats
Ohio = Ohio + Indiana + Kentucky, 31 seats
Missouri = Illinois + Missouri, 26 seats
Michigan = Michigan + Wisconsin + Minnesota, 30 seats
Texas = Texas, 36 seats
Nebraska = Oklahoma + Kansas + Nebraska + Iowa + North Dakota + South Dakota + Wyoming, 19 seats
California = California, 53 seats
Arizona = New Mexico + Colorado + Arizona + Nevada + Utah, 27 seats
Oregon = Washington + Oregon + Idaho + Montana, 18 seats

The number of seats are the number of total seats these states have in the upcoming Congress, to be elected in 2012. In other words, they're 2010 census numbers. I have thus partitioned the United States into fifteen super-states, though I don't think they deserve the term mega-state. If these had been the Electoral College boundaries in 2008, it would have benefited John McCain, since he won the Ohio and Arizona super-states by the narrowest of margins in the aggregate, while Obama won most of the electoral votes from these regions. Here's a map of how 2008 would have looked using these boundaries:

I find it interesting and slightly surprising how strongly blue the Virginia state is, but I guess I shouldn't be: we're putting Delaware/Maryland/DC, which is highly Democratic, together with newly-blue Virginia and small though deep red West Virginia. Anyway, New York's the most lopsided state of the bunch, and Mississippi's the most Republican state. It's a little hard to guess who the Senators would be from each state since we don't know what the schedules would be, but here are my guesses as to the two strongest candidates from each "state," plus two honorable mentions to give each party two (note, I'm not doing this for California, Texas, New York, or Florida. You can guess why.):

New England: John Kerry (D), Jack Reed (D); Honorables: Olympia Snowe (R), Scott Brown (R)
New Jersey: Bob Menendez (D), Bob Casey (D); Honorable: Pat Toomey (R)
Virginia: Mark Warner (D), Barbara Mikulski (D); Honorable: uhhh, there are no Republican Senators from this area. Wow.
Carolina: Lindsey Graham (R), Jim DeMint (R); Honorable: Kay Hagan (D)
Mississippi: Lamar Alexander (R), Richard Shelby (R); Honorable: Mary Landrieu (D), Mark Pryor (D)
Ohio: Richard Lugar (R), Sherrod Brown (D); Honorable: Rand Paul (R)
Michigan: Carl Levin (D), Amy Klobuchar (D); Honorable: Ron Johnson (R)
Missouri: Dick Durbin (D), Mark Kirk (R); Honorable: Roy Blunt (R), Claire McCaskill (D)
Kansas: John Thune (R), Tom Coburn (R); Honorable: Kent Conrad (D), Tim Johnson (D)
Arizona: Mark Udall (D), John McCain (R); Honorable: Harry Reid (D), John Kyl (R)
Oregon: Ron Wyden (D), Patty Murray (D); Honorable: Mike Crapo (R), Jim Risch (R)

Using the current Senators from the four single states, this gives us a Senate that's 18 D, 12 R, a bigger margin than the current one (and indeed, a 60% supermajority). Now, this was a very subjective exercise, and it might turn out a little more even.

Anyway, after I did this I was a little frustrated by how I couldn't seem to get a few of the states big enough, especially Oregon and New England. So I decided, just for fun, to see what happens if I include Canada (which also puts Alaska back in the mix). Still limited to just the continent, so this is North America north of Mexico. Here's my new layout, still with just fifteen states, somehow:

California = California, 37.3 million people
Arizona = Arizona + Colorado + Utah + Nevada + New Mexico, 18.9 million people
Kansas = Wyoming + North Dakota + South Dakota + Nebraska + Iowa + Missouri + Kansas + Oklahoma,  19.5 million people
Texas = Texas, 25.1 million people
Mississippi = Louisiana + Arkansas + Tennessee + Mississippi + Alabama, 21.5 million people
Florida = Florida, 18.8 million people
Carolina = Georgia + South Carolina + North Carolina, 23.8 million people
Virginia = West Virginia + Virginia + District of Colombia + Maryland + Delaware, 17.1 million people
Ohio = Kentucky + Ohio + Indiana, 22.4 million people
Illinois = Illinois + Wisconsin + Minnesota, 23.8 million people
Pennsylvania = Pennsylvania + New Jersey, 21.5 million people
New York = New York, 19.4 million people
New England = Connecticut + Rhode Island + Massachusetts + Vermont + New Hampshire + Maine + New Brunswick + Nova Scotia + Prince Edward Island + Newfoundland and Labrador + Quebec, 24.7 million people
Ontario = Ontario + Michigan, 23.1 million people
Oregon = Oregon + Washington + Idaho + Montana + British Colombia + Alberta + Manitoba + Saskatchewan + Northwest Territories + Nunavut + Yukon + Alaska, 23.2 million people

Obviously that Oregon territory is pretty damn large. There's really one main problem that I see with this, which is that I doubt that Quebec would like being part of something called "New England." But it really works so well, I dunno, and I'm not sure what other name they'd like that thing to have. After all, New England is still a majority of that state. California's a whole lot bigger than any other state, but I don't see that there's anything to do about that, since I'm explicitly not letting myself chop up any states and I really don't want to be operating at a California level of population for my average.

So that's just a little fun, random fun with maps. I've got a map of the US-Canada thing that I'm working on, and if I finish it I'll edit it into this post.