A properly drawn congressional boundary should have a predictable number of citizens, however. Arbitrarily choosing county boundaries (and why county boundarie

A properly drawn congressional boundary should have a predictable number of citizens, however. Arbitrarily choosing county boundaries (and why county boundaries instead of some other method?) would probably upset the balance of population and require reallocation of representatives. Or maybe the price of seceding from your state is that you don't get to take the representation with you and therefore must wait until the next census to clear it up.