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That's an interesting choice of example state given New Hampshire's significant role in primary elections.

• notahacker 12y ago
  The tendency of a few states (including a handful of very small ones) to get disproportionate attention at the federal level (and sometimes accompanying pork-barrel policies) is a bug rather than a feature of the US system.
  • smacktoward 12y ago
    There's nothing inherent in the American election system that requires New Hampshire and Iowa to get the attention they do. That's strictly an artifact of how the parties have chosen to schedule their primary calendars; New Hampshire and Iowa happened to be put first in the schedule, and people started paying more attention to them on the theory that winning these early primaries could start a snowball effect of support in the later ones. Either party could choose any time it wants to reshuffle their primary calendar and move some other states before NH and IA, or to hold all their primaries at once on the same day. There's just not much pressure on them to do so, so inertia keeps them where they are.
    • maxerickson 12y ago
      The state parties set the dates. Of course the national parties can influence that, but there is no cohesive group mandating the dates. A not very talked about aspect of U.S. politics is how much influence peddling is possible at that level.
• baddox 12y ago
  But they still can't make treaties with foreign nations, raise a military, mint coins, or any of several other things generally associated with sovereign nations.