"the more populous subdivisions shall be divided before the less populous"
This strikes me as a bit odd. I wonder why Congress did that? Is a city a "subdivision" for this purpose, since cities in the text are on the same level as counties? If so, they are more protected against chops than subdivisions down the food chain, like towns or townships. In Columbia County, if the county needed to be chopped, it would force the chop to be in the town of Kinderhook, and that might affect the CD lines in a more dramatic manner, since all things being equal, depending on the size of the chop, one might need to design a CD that was a tad short of people to append Kinderhook.
Also odd is the cliff mechanism. If NY did not lose population, it would lose no seats. If it lost 1 person, it loses 3 seats. But then, if limited to just a one seat loss, we have an ever greater number of representatives.
Finally, I notice that that way the 1% deviation rule is phrased, the population range is 2% rather than 1%, since the deviation benchmark is the quota figure, not the difference between the least populated and most populated CD. SCOTUS might not like that when the case comes before it.
Finally, this whole packing of the House screws less populated states, since the percentage of electors attributable to the two Senators from each state, is a lower and lower percentage of the electoral college pie. I wonder why more lightly populated state US Senators did not filibuster against the passage of the law that let the genie out of the bottle in the first place.
All lawyers on the forum should probably be banned. They are a pain in the ass.
