Autopopulate a USA State dropdown field based on IP address

Before I build this thought I would ask if there is a widget that can do this?

Detect visitor's region then select that region as the default value on a state drop-down list.

There is a widget that can detect the region of a country (and several other fields) from the ip address of the user. Its called the "Get Visitior Location" widget:

https://widgets.jotform.com/widget/get_visitor_location

So you could use that?

it would be a start but seems kludgey at best.  Can this be used as a starting point for a new widget? 

All you really need is the default state list and then Region set as the default value

I have forwarded a request to have such a widget. If this gets implemented, you will be notified via this thread. Just note that there isn't an estimated time-frame for an implementation.