I don't think doing some tweaking to balance the regions would cause all the states to go unrepresented. The JO National team last year was made up of gymnasts from 17 states. I think the girls good enough to finish top 4 at nationals would qualify no matter what the system.
Moving Illinois from 5 to 4 was never a good idea. You just replace the problem of 5 being too big with the problem of 4 being too big.
I get that we want the whole country to be represented. But we drew the lines in the first place, right? I don't understand what's wrong with redrawing the lines, just a little, to help balance the numbers just a little better. When the lines were drawn did they really envision that some regions would have 5 to 6 times as many gymnasts as the others? What about something like this:
Move Norcal to region 2, Michigan to region 4, New Jersey to region 6, North and South Carolina to region 7
Current level 10 numbers at regionals
region 1 - 225
region 2 - 50
region 3 - 181
region 4 - 149
region 5 - 261
region 6 - 143
region 7 - 163
region 8 - 259
estimated new numbers
region 1 - 165
region 2 - 110
region 3 - 181
region 4 - 209
region 5 - 201
region 6 - 203
region 7 - 168
region 8 - 194
Perfect? Absolutely not. And I am sure that there might be some better moves that could be made. But we could bring the numbers a little closer to balanced by just moving a few border states to the next regions. And I think the smaller states will still have a chance. And it might even give the smaller states that are currently in a large region dominated by a couple large states a better chance.