Did you miss the States part of "United States of America"? Ever since Madison's brilliant compromise at the founding of our current government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise the USA has tried to be mindful of the sovereignty of the states. (America's previous government, under the Articles of Confederation, was a loose agreement among the states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State%27s_rights#Controversy_to...) The balance got out of hand in the mid-1800's and a civil war broke out over the issues of states' rights vs. the federal government. Generally, states have the freedom to run elections in any way they want without interference from the federal government.
In fact there was a case in my home state of New Hampshire a few years ago, where a state worker was investigated for not using funds that had been made available by the federal government for each state to use for elections. The state worker's defense was that the money had strings attached; basically there were some restrictions on how the federal money could be used during the election. The investigation was dropped immediately, in favor of the worker. Basically my state would rather spend millions of extra dollars to run the elections than allow the federal government to put restrictions on the way they run elections.
Yes, I have a bit of a grasp on the setup, I just think it's completely insane and not worth the tradeoffs :)
Do you feel it's beneficial for New Hampshire to be in a federal union where it doesn't control its economic policy, central bank issues, or foreign policy, but can ensure it has its way on such issues on who can get married and how you vote in the federal elections, where your votes are ultimately largely meaningless? That seems a bit neither here nor there to me.
It's not so much about making each vote count for something (although people pay a huge amount of attention to NH's early primaries), it's about making sure the larger states don't steamroll the smaller ones.
The USA experimented with decentralized banks (each state printed its own currency for a while) and it was a mess, so centralized banking is more of a practical solution than an ideal one. Other issues including who gets married etc, are idiosyncratic to particular cultural and even subcultural groups, and seems best handled by responsive, representative legislation than blanket national policy.
In fact there was a case in my home state of New Hampshire a few years ago, where a state worker was investigated for not using funds that had been made available by the federal government for each state to use for elections. The state worker's defense was that the money had strings attached; basically there were some restrictions on how the federal money could be used during the election. The investigation was dropped immediately, in favor of the worker. Basically my state would rather spend millions of extra dollars to run the elections than allow the federal government to put restrictions on the way they run elections.