Days after winning a narrow reelection, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden is eyeing the possibility of overhauling the way members of Congress are chosen nationwide.

Rep. Jared Golden listens to a question from the media Nov. 6 after declaring victory on Election Night. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Along with the co-chairperson of the Blue Dog Coalition, a small group of Democrats that seeks to work with Republicans, the Lewiston lawmaker is calling for the creation of a bipartisan task force to look into a range of possible changes to the winner-take-all electoral system in place for the U.S. House.

Among the ideas being considered are expanding the size of the House of Representatives, which has held at 435 for nearly a century, requiring independent redistricting commissions and perhaps adopting multimember districts that would be divvied up in proportion to the votes cast.

“Americans on both sides are fed up with a political system that incentivizes division,” Golden said in a news release put out this week by co-chairperson U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Washington state Democrat.

“Fixing our laws to make government more representative doesn’t just sound great on paper: states like Maine have already proven it works,” Golden said. “Getting both Democrats and Republicans to start talking about solutions is the first step to a better future.”

Perez, who hails from a Republican-leaning district, said that “regardless of party or ideology, more and more Americans feel that our democracy isn’t working for them. Voters feel unrepresented and are losing faith in a government that they view as unreflective of their communities and values.”

“As members of Congress, we need to take a step back, reexamine how we got here, and work toward what we can do to fix it,” she said.

Perez said the “bipartisan select committee” that she and Golden envision “will look at the role our electoral system plays in exacerbating the hyper-partisanship, cynicism, and obstruction that has taken over today’s politics.”

“It’s past time for Congress to set aside the conflict and chaos of clickbait politics and get back to work governing on behalf of the American people,” Perez said.

Expanding the size of the House is an idea that many political science professors have called for in recent years.

One study by the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, found the United States has far more constituents per lawmaker than its peers around the world.

“When it comes to House size, the United States is an outlier, with a ratio of 762,000 constituents per representative,” its report found.

A table showing the relative sizes of parliamentary houses in many of the world’s major powers. The United States has far more people voting in each of its districts than its counterparts. Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship

By comparison, the House of Commons in the United Kingdom has a representative for every 101,000 British citizens and Germany has one for every 116,000 Germans.

Among developed countries, aside the U.S., Japan has the largest average district size. It has 270,000 people per representative.

The study called for the U.S. to have about 700 members in the House to move it closer to the world norm, a move that would drastically change its makeup, though it’s not clear which party would benefit.

But Golden and his Blue Dog counterpart are looking at more than just upping the number of lawmakers.

They want the panel to look at a wide variety of possible revisions.

Their bill would create a 14-member panel, with membership split evenly between the parties, that would hold hearings, listen to experts and perhaps propose major changes within a year.

Among the ideas it is called on to examine are the creation of multimember districts with proportional representation, adjusting the number of House members, adopting ranked-choice or cumulative voting, revisions to ballot design, requiring open and nonpartisan primaries as well as independent redistricting commissions.

The proposal by the two members of Congress follows a call by Scholars for Electoral Reform to revamp what they called “America’s outdated electoral system, which promotes an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ approach to politics.”

“Changing how we elect our representatives can promote cooperation, temper polarization, and generate more consensus-building in policymaking,” the 170 scholars said in a letter released Nov. 13.