Why not merge North and South Dakota?
Because both states would have to consent to it, and they wouldn’t.
Yeah! And really, both Colorado and Wyoming? WTF? Lets just merge all of New England while we’re at it. Seriously…is there something particularly offensive about having the north/south state split or what?
Why so many countries in the first place? Let’s just bundle the whole thing up.
And don’t get me started on why so many posters in a forum. We should just have one big poster
Are you mad?! Why, that would unbalance the whole nothern plains, and the country would spin off balance like a pair of sneakers in a washing machine.
Well, influential folk in North Dakota were considering changing the state’s name to Dakota awhile back, on the theory that dropping the “North” would convince people it wasn’t really a frigid wind-swept prairie. The chorus of horse laughs apparently got that plan shelved.
Seriously, there are considerably differences between North and South Dakota, if not in geography. N.D. has a progressive and even radical history politically, S.D. has historically been much more conservative. Though it has been electing some Democrats of late.
Hey, why not incorporate all New York City’s western suburbs and the shoreline south of them into New York. It has no business claiming to be a separate state! 
And while we’re at it, there’s another North/South situation that needs fixing. From John C. Calhoun to the unpleasantness at Fort Sumter to Strom Thurmond, South Carolina has been an embarrassment to the nation. Let’s merge it back into (North) Carolina, where the levelheaded folks in Wilmington, Fayetteville, Raleigh, Winston-Salem, and Charlotte can stifle the rednecks of the southern part.
And we’ve already done a GD about the fictionality of Delaware. 
ooh…I have a big poster on the wall of my bedroom. Does that count?
Let me guess, Natasja Kinski and the Snake?
No, man. THAT one’s on the ceiling.
Hey, we’re working on it 
Just give us time… us Spaniards go all :eek: every time mention of Morocco joining the EU comes up but just give it time…
[homer simpson]
There is no South Dakota!
They don’t want us to know!
[/hs]
Although that might change soon . . .
SD has some of the Real West – ranching, cowboy culture, and a few powerful landowners. ND was always mostly small farmers of “white ethnic” stock. (SD has 'em too, but mostly in the east.)
Harry Turtledove, in his what-if SF series about the Confederacy winning the Civil War, merged the two states into a single “Dakotah,” IIRC.
Another way of dealing with that particular north/south situation is to rename the states like this:
North Carolina becomes simply “Carolina.”
South Carolina gets renamed “Thurmond.”
Since they’ve named practically everything in SC after Strom anyway by now, they could hardly object, and it would be simpler, really, just to name the whole state after him, rather than name half the highways, government buildings, etc., etc. after him.
This old thread is worth a look.
There’s no way I’m letting Virginia get its homophobic hands on my state again. Montani semper liberi!
In territorial days, there was but a single Dakota Territory. The 1880’s, however, were a decade of good rainfall and overly optimistic settlement on the Great Plains, and when the time came to draft a statehood act (1889), Congress acceded to the importunities of the citizens to carve the territory in two.
I like North Dakota. It has Lawrence Welk’s portrait hanging front and center in the rotunda of the state capitol, in a city named after a not-so-nice Nineteenth Century German Chancellor. Plus it has a cool and uncrowded National Park (Roosevelt) and a lot of curlers. Keep it independent, I say.
I think it’s time to merge all the New England States, put the Virginias back together, and throw in Mariland, D.C., and Delaware.
Small states are only there to add tollbooths to the turnpikes.