Talk:Political divisions of the United States

message: Adam, you just undid my revisions at Political divisions of the United States. I am still in the process of updating this article. You say that the links are an important part of this article. I disagree. They are an important part of the Insular Area article, and you'll note, are copied from there almost word for word. This page, rated C by the United States project, is currently a mess. I am trying to clean it up. I will copy all this to the talk page. Let's talk about it there. Bg860e (talk) 07:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleaning up Insular Areas

message: The federal government of the United States was created when sovereign states delegated some of their sovereignty to one central government. The sovereignty they delegated, however, was not complete. The logical extension of this delegation is that the federal government enjoys limited sovereignty, and the states retain whatever sovereignty they never delegated to the federal government.
This is incorrect and puts a bit of a Civil War era spin on the nature of the Federal system.  The states did not create the national government by a "delegation" of sovereignty.    The United States has traditionally been regarded (legally and colloquially) as a creation of the people, not as agents of state government, but as individuals.  One does not have to be a citizen of a state to be a citizen of the United States, and state governments have no explicit power over the national government.    —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.97.45.146 (talk) 03:20, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nature of the US Federal System 

message: Article states:"There are approximately 30,000 incorporated cities in the United States, with varying degrees of self-rule."
The 2002 Census of governments Volume 1
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/gc021x1.pdf
States:
There are 19,429 municipal governments in the United States.  For the purposes of the census, a “municipal government” refers to “political subdivisions within which a municipal corporation has been established to provide general local government for a specific population concentration in a defined area, and includes all active government units officially designated as cities, boroughs (except in Alaska), towns (except in Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin, and six New England states) and villages.” 
Should this citation be more precise than "approximatly 30,000"?
I want to comment here on the claim that counties are always the second tier of government below the state-level, as well as the claim that townships are an administrative subdivision of counties.  In Vermont, neither of these things is true.  Below the state level, we have town government.  Counties exist in Vermont (we have county court houses and a county sheriff), but there is no government at that level.  Furthermore, town governments are not administrative subdivisions of anything, but are elected governments in their own right, many of which pre-date the state.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Streifenhörnchen (talk • contribs) 00:42, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of cities 

message: I'd like to propose a new section: Pseudo-government entities, or something along those lines. Skim through Homeowners association. They are increasing, both in number and power, have the ability to levy taxes and fines, regulate the colours one paints a house, etc. They have been recognised as plaintiffs in various court cases. A few quotes from the page follow.
* "In some U.S. states, California or Texas for instance, a homeowners association can foreclose a member's house without any judicial procedure in order to collect special assessments, fees and even a fine. Other states, like Florida, require a judicial hearing."
* (different court case) "In ruling for the plaintiffs [in Committee for a Better Twin Rivers v. Twin Rivers Homeowners’ Association], the appeals court relied on a 1946 United States Supreme Court case, Marsh v. Alabama. In Marsh, the Court held that a company-owned town that functioned like a government should be treated like one."
Thoughts?samwaltz 14:36, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New section: Pseudo-government entities?

message: The disputed areas in the list are not all 'territories' but yet are listed under that heading.  It would be unbiased to direct people to the page about American territorial disputes than to confuse them into thinking that Machias Seal Island is considered a federal territory when it is actually Maine's and that the Dixon Entrance is a land dispute.  Do you think I don't want people to know about the disputes?  What is my motivation except to make this page unbiased?CharlesRobertCountofNesselrode 11:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disputed Areas 

message: What purpose does the SVG map in the "External links" section serve? There are already maps and links to all the states earlier in the article, and the state names/abbreviations aren't well positioned on the map (probably varies by user). For me, "Oklahoma" barely touches Oklahoma, and "DC" is in the middle of Pennsylvania. I think the map should be deleted if it can't be fixed (and even then it seems redundant). —KCinDC (talk) 20:59, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The map is totally useless. I say delete it. -epicAdam (talk) 21:38, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No one's spoken up for it, so I removed it. —KCinDC (talk) 23:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove SVG map? 

message: *Are Iraq and Afghanistan also US territories as they are American occupied entities? 210.9.15.116 12:38, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Iraq and Afghanistan

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Political divisions of the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100410124518/http://www.doi.gov/oia/Islandpages/political_types.htm to http://www.doi.gov/oia/Islandpages/political_types.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 05:52, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Political divisions of the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20040202150052/http://www.ac.wwu.edu:80/~stephan/48states.html to http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/48states.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 10:27, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Please see Template_talk:Infobox_U.S._state#Images generate lint error: Bogus file options for a discussion on the bug in  that the flag, seal, and map parameters each generate a Lint error: Bogus file options, and please add your thoughts there, not here. —Anomalocaris (talk) 18:50, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:   Template:Infobox U.S. state: Image-related parameters generate lint error 

message: We currently have three articles that cover the divisions of the United States:
* List of states and territories of the United States, which covers the top-level divisions
* Political divisions of the United States, which covers top-level, county, and municipal levels
* Local government in the United States, which covers county and municipal levels
This is a double overlap, and I think if we had two articles instead of three, it would be easier for readers to navigate, cut redundant content and thus reduce editor maintenance burden.
Because the "political divisions" article already has a list of states and territories, I have proposed merging the list into it, which I think would also improve the quality of the destination article because the source article has featured status.
An alternative solution would be to split the "political divisions" article and merge its pieces into either the top-level list (which already has a lot of highly polished prose covering the same topic) or the "local government" article, as appropriate.
Would you support either or both of those merges? Any other thoughts? -- Beland (talk) 09:55, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I don’t support merging or deleting these. States and territories covers exclusively federal jurisdiction, widely considered to be drastically different in nature from local government in function and nature. Most countries have a similar high-level article focusing exclusively on federal or national administrative regions. Merging the political divisions article would be virtually impossible as the US has literally tens of thousands of counties and cities/towns/townships. If anything, you could merge this political divisions article with the local government piece, which would provide a more accurate idea of how state and local governments interact. Toa Nidhiki05 10:17, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I don't think all the content would fit into one article (though it's not like every single county and town are listed). What you suggest sounds like my second alternative, so I'm happy to do that. -- Beland (talk) 23:40, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Split-and-merge complete! -- Beland (talk) 17:24, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge from [[List of states and territories of the United States]]