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"Our recent vacation in Colorado led to a lot of questions from my kids about the 50 states: How are they different from one another? Why, as DC residents, don&amp;#x27;t we live in one? Finally they asked, &amp;quot;Is any other country set up this way, with all these different states doing their own thing and one big national government keeping an eye on them?&amp;quot; The short answer, of course, is &amp;quot;no.&amp;quot; Yes, Canadian provinces have disparate interests, and some of the cobbled-together countries of Eastern Europe have only tenuous ties among their assembled parts. But I can&amp;#x27;t think of another country that was set up quite this way on purpose. At no time is the diversity of our 50 states more apparent than a presidential election year. That&amp;#x27;s what the Electoral College is all about: technically, each state holds its own election, and decides which candidate deserves its vote. National preferences mean next to nothing. Now, this system can be confounding. But it can also lead to really interesting strategies. If John McCain needs to win Florida, and he does, how does he make up for the voters he lost by supporting offshore oil drilling? If Barack Obama needs to win Pennsylvania (hard to see a Democratic victory without it) how does he win over blue collar voters who think he&amp;#x27;s elitist? Hispanic voters are getting more attention because they could make the difference in potential swing states like Colorado. If you are not an Iowa corn farmer, or an Ohio factory worker, or a Nevada Latino, you might find their voting influence disproportionate. But think of the alternative. In a national vote, candidates would just run up the numbers in their most reliable comfort zones, and never have to learn about ethanol, or CAFE standards, or Yucca Mountain. You can be frustrated by how different our state priorities are, or you can embrace it. And while we&amp;#x27;re all embracing, can we get voting rights for DC, too? &amp;amp;#8212;Rebecca"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/glamocracy/2008/07/chaotic-states-of-america>