General Discussion

But close.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

Seems that it requires a census ("Enumeration&quot and that re-apportionment be based on the count, giving a constraint that you can't just have arbitrarily small districts but take the state's enumeration/30,000 and round down. That led to an unwieldy-sized House and the 1929 Apportionment Act.

Seems to me that Art. 1(2) requires that reapportionment occur after every 10 years, to suit a equal representation requirement in statue or case law, that statute requires 435 to be distributed among the 50 states by relative population size, but there's not a constraint on how frequently the states reapportion their territory and population for representatives.

I don't think it prohibits redistricting mid-census cycle, nor does it mandate a redistricting if the population of a state is fairly consistent without any significant population redistriction by census. (The Constitution, at least in this clause, also doesn't require equal representation; that's either statute or later SCOTUS rulings, I'd suspect.) Just a lay opinion.

Back to weighing whether I like my coffee resulting from pour-over or French press. Or the Czech way from the '90s from restaurants and the mensa, coffee grounds on the bottom of the cup, add water, stir, and let the grounds settle.