Model laws are especially prevalent in federations because the federal subjects (for example, states, provinces, or other subjects) are autonomous or semi-autonomous but nonetheless can benefit from a substantial degree of uniformity of laws among jurisdictions. For example, in the United States, because the country consists of 50 semi-autonomous states, each with its own legislature and set of laws, avoidance of needless variation is valuable, reserving variation only to essential autonomous differences. There, model laws are referred to as model acts or model bills. Many American special interest groups draft model acts which they lobby lawmakers to pass. In particular, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has successfully gotten hundreds of model acts passed since 2010. Uniform acts are model acts intended to be enacted exactly as written. They are drafted by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC), a state-run non-profit organization whose purpose is to draft laws in areas where uniformity is important (for example, to facilitate interstate commerce).