Bear with me on this as it's slightly complicated.
The way I understand it each state in the United States has more or less the same type of state government. All the eligible voters vote in the election and the candidate with the most votes becomes governor. There's also some form of bicarmel legislature, (except for Nebraska), and according to wikipedia the state governments are modeled on the Federal Government.
My idea is what if there was a bit more variety among forms of government.
I'll give some examples to try and make it clearer.
New York State uses a parlimentary system of government. There's a lower house, the Chamber of Deputies who are elected by the first past the post system, and an upper house, the State Senate, where the members are appointed until the age of seventy, each party in the lower house having a set number of appointies. The leader of the party with the most members in the lower house is governor, refered to as Premier. Like Britain the government can call an election when it likes or can be forced to call one by a vote of no confidence.
New Jersey uses a semi-presidential system. The governor is elected by majority popular vote but the luitenant governor is the chosen by the unicarmel state legislature.
And so on and so forth from state to state.
You guys can probably work this out better than I can but the general idea is that while the President of the USA is elected in the same manner as OTL the individual state governments are free to chose whatever system they like from among those available, so long as it's a democratic system that is.
So how would these governments develop and how would this effect politics in the USA?