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Comment by sslayer | Hacker News Reader

At the Local and State level - I don't understand why people don't get this - at the Federal level you have representation. The United States intent was to Unite the States on Federal/National issues - not local ones - the intent was to leave the states to rules at the state level, not make sure "everyone in the United States" is "doing the same thing".

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And it's not even really a conservative view to say that. Even the most liberal of politicians would acknowledge that laws governing certain areas don't make sense everywhere, and there's a reason for keeping states, given the gigantic size of our country.

This comes up all the time in redistricting conversations; very often the goal for some of the strangers gerrymandered districts is to keep populations together.

People should have a say in how their day-to-day lives are governed, and not just be ruled by a huge cluster of people on a completely different part of the planet.

This has nothing to do with whether there could be a referendum mechanism or not.

Congress (and the rest of the federal government) can and does do all of the absurdities you are suggesting is prevented by the people having no direct say.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your reference to referendum.

It's by design that people have no direct say, however. That's a substantially worse system, by nearly every measurement, to generally employ.

Most people’s referendum concepts only make it a ballot based on a swell in support for the referendum to begin with. A decent threshold of the population needs to want any particular measure to begin with. So most things would be squashed.

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