Know Your Government

How state governments work

Sections of this page

What states can do

States hold what courts call the police power: broad authority to make laws for public health, safety and welfare, limited by the U.S. Constitution, federal law and the state's own constitution. Each state constitution sets up a legislature, an executive and courts, and many go into far more detail than the federal one, on taxes, debt, education and local government.

Sources: U.S. Constitution, Tenth Amendment; Legal Information Institute: police powers

Legislatures

Every state but Nebraska has a legislature of two chambers. The upper chamber is the Senate. The lower is the House of Representatives in most states; the Assembly in California, Nevada, New York and Wisconsin; the General Assembly in New Jersey; and the House of Delegates in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Nebraska's single chamber has 49 members, called senators, elected without party labels on the ballot.

Who presides varies. In 24 states the lieutenant governor is the president of the senate (in Nebraska, of its one-chamber Legislature). Tennessee's and West Virginia's senates elect their own leader, whom the law also titles lieutenant governor, and elsewhere the senate elects its own president. Lower chambers elect a speaker, who usually controls committee assignments, the referral of bills and the floor calendar. In Texas the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate and, with the Speaker of the House, jointly chairs the Legislative Budget Board (Tex. Gov't Code 322.001).

Nonpartisan staff support the legislators: legislative counsel or revisors draft bills and keep the state's code of laws; fiscal offices estimate what bills cost; auditors review state agencies; and each chamber's clerk or secretary keeps its journal and records its votes.

See it on this site: Every state legislature

Sources: Nebraska Legislature: History of the Unicameral; Nebraska Legislature: Senators by district; NCSL: Roles and Responsibilities of Selected Leadership Positions; Texas Government Code, chapter 322 (Legislative Budget Board); Texas Legislative Budget Board: About

Governors, and the other officials states elect

The federal government elects one executive. Most states elect several: besides the governor, voters choose some combination of a lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor or comptroller, and in some states a superintendent of schools or commissioners of agriculture, insurance, labor or public utilities. Each answers to the voters rather than to the governor, and they need not belong to the governor's party. This is often called a plural executive.

Voters statewide

GovernorChief executive; appoints most agency heads
Lieutenant governorFirst in line to succeed the governor
Attorney generalThe state's chief legal officer
Secretary of stateState records and business filings; elections in many states
TreasurerHolds and invests the state's money

A common arrangement. Which officers are elected, and what each does, differs from state to state.

The governor

The governor is the state's chief executive and commands its National Guard when the Guard is not in federal service. Governors sign or veto bills, and 44 of them can also veto individual items in spending bills, a line-item veto. The six who cannot are the governors of Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Vermont. Some governors can reduce an appropriation instead of striking it, or return a bill with changes for the legislature to accept (an amendatory veto). Governors also issue executive orders, declare emergencies, and grant pardons and other clemency, in many states together with a board.

Other statewide officials

Lieutenant governor: Usually first in line to succeed the governor, and in 24 states the president of the senate (who presides, state by state). Five states have none.
Attorney general: The state's chief legal officer: represents the state and its agencies in court, defends its laws, enforces consumer-protection and other laws, and issues legal opinions. Elected in most states.
Secretary of state: Keeps the state's official records and business filings, and in most states is the chief election official: elected to that role in 31 states and appointed to it in several more. In Alaska and Utah the elected lieutenant governor runs elections instead, and elsewhere a board or another appointed official does.
Treasurer, comptroller and auditor: Hold and invest the state's money, pay its bills, and audit how it was spent. Which of these offices exist, and which are elected, varies.
Superintendent of public instruction: Oversees the public schools and state school aid. Elected in some states; appointed, or replaced by a board, in most.
Commissioners: Some states elect commissioners of agriculture, insurance or labor, or the members of the commission that regulates utilities.

Texas also elects a commissioner of the General Land Office, which manages state lands and mineral rights whose income supports public schools, and the three members of the Railroad Commission, which, despite its name, regulates the state's oil and gas industry and pipelines.

On the 2026 ballot

On November 3, 2026, 36 states elect a governor, and 88 of the 99 state legislative chambers hold regular elections for some or all of their seats. The 2026 ballot map shows which offices and how many seats each state elects, with the state's own record for each.

See it on this site: Each state's governor and the officials it elects

Sources: NCSL: Separation of Powers, Executive Veto Powers; NCSL: Roles and Responsibilities of Selected Leadership Positions; NCSL: Election Administration at State and Local Levels; Texas General Land Office: About the GLO; Railroad Commission of Texas: RRC History

Councils and cabinets that check the governor

Some states give other separately elected officials a formal check on the governor. Among them:

New Hampshire: Five executive councilors, elected every two years from districts, must consent before the governor appoints judges, the attorney general and other officers, grants a pardon, or pays money out of the treasury (Constitution, Part Second, Articles 46, 52 and 56). Under the state's procedures manual, the Governor and Council also approve state contracts over $10,000.
Massachusetts: The eight elected members of the Governor's Council approve judicial appointments, pardons and commutations, and the warrants for the state's payments.
North Carolina: The Council of State is the state's ten elected executive officers, the governor and lieutenant governor among them. Its approval is needed for the state to buy, sell or lease land, and to spend from the Contingency and Emergency Fund.
Florida: The Cabinet is the elected attorney general, chief financial officer and commissioner of agriculture. A pardon needs the approval of two of them, and with the governor they act as the trustees of the state's lands and, less the agriculture commissioner, as the State Board of Administration, which invests its funds (Constitution, Article IV, Sections 4 and 8).

Sources: New Hampshire Constitution (Justia); New Hampshire Executive Council; Massachusetts Governor's Council; North Carolina Constitution, Article III; N.C. Gen. Stat. 146-22 (state land acquisitions); N.C. Gen. Stat. 146-29 (state land dispositions); N.C. Gen. Stat. 143C-4-4 (Contingency and Emergency Fund); Florida Constitution, Article IV (Florida Senate)

State courts

State courts hear the great majority of the country's cases, criminal and civil. Most states have these levels:

Level	Judges	What it hears
Court of last resort, usually called the supreme court	A chief justice and associate justices	The final word on the state's constitution and laws: appeals it must hear, such as death sentences in many states, and others it chooses to
Intermediate appeals courts, in most states	Appellate judges, sitting in panels	Appeals from the trial courts, on whether the law was applied correctly; they do not retry the facts
Trial courts of general jurisdiction	Called district, circuit, superior or common pleas courts; in New York, the Supreme Court	Felonies and larger civil cases
Courts of limited jurisdiction	Municipal judges, magistrates, justices of the peace	Misdemeanors, traffic cases, small claims and first appearances
Specialized courts	Probate, surrogate's, family and juvenile judges	Wills and estates, guardianships, divorce, custody and juvenile cases

Texas and Oklahoma each have two highest courts: a Supreme Court for civil cases and a Court of Criminal Appeals for criminal ones. Juvenile cases go to the Supreme Court in Texas, but juvenile delinquency appeals go to the Court of Criminal Appeals in Oklahoma, where the Supreme Court settles any dispute between the two over which should hear a case.

States choose their judges in several ways: partisan elections, nonpartisan elections, appointment by the governor, election by the legislature, or merit selection. Under merit selection a commission nominates candidates, the governor appoints one, and the judge later stands in a retention election; Missouri adopted it in 1940, and it is often called the Missouri Plan.

See it on this site: Each state's highest court, on its state page

Sources: New York State Unified Court System: Court Structure; Texas Judicial Branch: Court Structure; Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals: 2016 OK CR 24 (Rule 7.1, juvenile appeals); Oklahoma Constitution, Article VII; Missouri Courts: the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan

Following your legislature

A legislature's committees hold hearings on bills, and many take testimony from the public. In Texas, for example, the Legislature's site posts each committee's hearing schedule, and a member of the public must register electronically before testifying at a House committee hearing. Each legislature's own site says how it works there; every state legislature, on this site, links to its own and lists who represents each district.

Sources: Texas Legislature Online: Frequently asked questions (testifying and committee schedules)