Before considering altering the regions or the federal legislative branch, one must consider the population. Does the population at this time warrant an expanded legislative branch? Probably not. Does the population at this time warrant less regions? Maybe, though if the current increase in voters holds, then there is no point in doing so any more as it should have been done when the population was much lower.
I do like the idea that was proposed in this thread (and has some similarities to the U.S. pre-17th amendment) of having an elected body and a body appointed by the regional government. But if we expand too much, we're less likely to have competitive elections and there even exist the possibility of no one / not enough people running for something.
I remember my first campaign platform back in April 2007 was to amend the Constitution allow allow the Governors to appoint regional Senators.
