Now that incumbent Rep. Jared Golden has (improbably, but in all likelihood) won re-election, he’s headed back to Washington with some big ideas. No, they’re not about inflation, securing the border, crime, housing costs or abortion – you know, the issues that voters care about the most, the issues that defined the presidential election. They’re not even about other major issues that were less important to most voters this time around, like the environment or the national debt.

Instead, his first major issue – even before a recount affirms his victory – is reform of the U.S. House of Representatives. If that sounds to you like a dry, academic topic that most voters don’t know anything about, let alone care about, well, sure. This isn’t a topic that is going to get Golden much attention. It’s an important issue, though, and one that more members of Congress, and voters, should demand be addressed.

Golden has a whole bunch of ideas, and the bill he’s introduced (one that probably won’t go anywhere) would only establish a commission to study them, a common technique in Congress to get some attention without actually doing anything. Some of the ideas are good ones that are hard to argue, like redistricting being handled by nonpartisan commissions in every state – just as Maine does it now. That idea is usually supported by the minority party in different states and opposed by the majority party. In Wisconsin, Democrats embrace it. In Maryland, it’s been Republicans who have supported it.

Other ideas are terrible ones that should be roundly rejected, like implementing ranked-choice voting and open primaries nationwide. Ranked-choice voting may be here to stay in Maine, but apart from Golden’s own first race it hasn’t had much effect – we haven’t seen any other examples of the outcome being changed in an election since it was implemented. For presidential races, its net effect has been to produce a longer ballot, so expanding ranked-choice voting would seem to be at odds with one of Golden’s other ideas: simplifying ballot design.

One of the good ideas he floats is to expand the size of the U.S. House of Representatives. While the number of representatives, 435, might seem to be set in stone, it’s only been in place since 1911, made permanent in 1929. Before 1911, the size of the House was regularly adjusted along with the census, which wasn’t a bad system. With the immense population growth since then, the U.S. House of Representatives has more constituents per district than any democracy other than India.

Expanding the size of the House may not have the effect that Golden hopes in reducing partisanship – at least, not in and of itself. If we increased the House to around 700 members, Maine would go from two to three U.S. Representatives. That would open up a new political office for someone, but it would still likely be won by a Democrat or a Republican, and there’s no way to know whether they’d be a centrist with no idea of the boundary lines.

Still, it’s a worthy idea in and of itself just because it would bring members of the House closer to their constituents. That’s not a big problem in smaller states like Maine, where retail politics is a way of life: it’s pretty easy to run into a Congressional candidate around here. In larger states, though, it would have a much bigger impact. California would go from 52 to 82 representatives, while Texas would go from 38 to 64. That would make a big difference to people in those states, even if it doesn’t here.

There is, moreover, some reason to believe that smaller districts might make politics slightly less acrimonious, if not less partisan. There are now, and always have been, lots of negative ads in state legislative races, but they rarely reach the acrimony of congressional ads. That’s not necessarily because the stakes are lower, but because it’s harder for PACs and parties to blanket the district with TV ads.

We should continue to largely leave decisions about redistricting and election administration to the states, but the size of the House is up to the House itself, so that’s fair game. While it might not be very likely that a bill like Golden’s would pass, it’s long past time to at least have this discussion.