More Col­orado house­holds have respond­ed to the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau than the nation­al aver­age a lit­tle over a month ahead of the dead­line, but advo­cates warn that rep­re­sen­ta­tion and mon­ey is at stake — par­tic­u­lar­ly for hard-to-reach com­mu­ni­ties — with the agency decid­ing to call an ear­ly end to door-knock­ing efforts.

As of Wednes­day, almost 81%  of Col­orado house­holds had returned their ques­tion­naires by mail, email or in response to a cen­sus tak­er who came to the door, com­pared with the nation­al rate of about 78%. Colorado’s self-response rate is near­ly 68%, which means those work­ers who showed up at people’s doors to help peo­ple sub­mit their infor­ma­tion made a difference.

The con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed pop­u­la­tion count of every­one liv­ing in the Unit­ed States is used to deter­mine fed­er­al fund­ing as well as polit­i­cal dis­tricts for the next decade. The agency decid­ed to end its door-knock­ing efforts on Sept. 30 — a month ear­li­er than planned — wor­ry­ing some non­prof­its that are work­ing to edu­cate peo­ple on the need to get count­ed. They’re par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about reach­ing com­mu­ni­ties that are hard­er to count, includ­ing immi­grants, renters, peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness, peo­ple of col­or and rur­al residents.

The chal­lenge was com­pound­ed this year by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and, in Col­orado recent­ly, by the added dif­fi­cul­ties of reach­ing peo­ple liv­ing near wild­fires, some of whom may be evacuating.

“The fact that they decid­ed two weeks ago to end it ear­ly is flab­ber­gast­ing,” said Gillian Win­bourn, project direc­tor for Togeth­er We Count Colorado.

Togeth­er We Count is a non­prof­it that was formed to assist Col­orado orga­ni­za­tions in edu­cat­ing com­mu­ni­ties about the cen­sus, and it has dis­trib­uted $400,000 to 64 organizations.

The Col­orado Gen­er­al Assem­bly also set aside $6 mil­lion for cen­sus efforts.

But this year’s unique chal­lenges have made the effort more com­pli­cat­ed. Many peo­ple in moun­tain and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties who typ­i­cal­ly work tem­po­rary jobs dur­ing tourist sea­sons relo­cat­ed ear­ly on — just as the cen­sus was start­ing. That means they could have missed crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the count, Win­bourn said.

Lati­no advo­ca­cy groups also have had their work cut out for them. Their efforts to assure all immi­grants they can feel safe fill­ing out the cen­sus were com­pli­cat­ed by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s efforts — ulti­mate­ly unsuc­cess­ful — to include a ques­tion about cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus. After los­ing that fight, he issued a memo say­ing immi­grants liv­ing in the coun­try ille­gal­ly can­not be count­ed toward a state’s con­gres­sion­al seat dis­tri­b­u­tion. Sev­er­al states, includ­ing Col­orado, respond­ed by suing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

The Pew Research Cen­ter esti­mates that Col­orado had 190,000 immi­grants liv­ing in the state with­out autho­riza­tion in 2016, about 3% of the state’s pop­u­la­tion at the time. Cal­i­for­nia had the largest such pop­u­la­tion at 2.2 million.

“It is our job at this point to high­light to our com­mu­ni­ties that the cen­sus is anoth­er way for them to have fund­ing for pub­lic health, for their edu­ca­tion, for any resources that are impor­tant to them,” said Yadi­ra Solis, out­reach man­ag­er at Col­orado Orga­ni­za­tion for Lati­na Oppor­tu­ni­ty and Repro­duc­tive Rights. “It is their time to show pow­er in numbers.”

Before the pan­dem­ic, COLOR was hold­ing “cafecitos” with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty to talk about the cen­sus, fund­ing and rep­re­sen­ta­tion, but since the start of the pan­dem­ic the group has focused more on vir­tu­al programming.

“More than any­thing, our biggest con­cern is that the sys­tem is stacked against com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, that there will not be fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion and that these com­mu­ni­ties will not get a fair share of the funds that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment pro­vides to ensure health and well being,” she said.

For Solis, the cen­sus count is a fam­i­ly affair. She comes from a fam­i­ly of immi­grants who worked in agri­cul­ture. Her par­ents’ pri­ma­ry lan­guage is Span­ish, so when the cen­sus ques­tion­naire arrived in 2010, she trans­lat­ed some ques­tions for her par­ents to help them fill it out.

“We all kind of sat down and com­plet­ed the cen­sus togeth­er,” she said. She added: “It’s a way to give back ful­ly to show rep­re­sen­ta­tion for my fam­i­ly.” A decade lat­er, she plans to do it again to avoid undercounts.

The cen­sus has also his­tor­i­cal­ly under­count­ed chil­dren. It esti­mates that 18,089 kids in Col­orado under 5 years old weren’t count­ed a decade ago.

An under­count could hob­ble the state for the next 10 years, affect­ing data, dol­lars and democ­ra­cy, Win­bourn said.

“Col­orado has changed tremen­dous­ly since 2010, and we have heard count­less­ly that the state and com­mu­ni­ties have not been able to keep up with growth, and we’re not see­ing growth slow down,” she added.

Based on Colorado’s pop­u­la­tion growth, lead­ers have expect­ed that the state will gain anoth­er con­gres­sion­al seat after the cen­sus count is com­plet­ed. An under­count could put that in jeopardy.

“With the way our democ­ra­cy is set up, we need ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what our state looks like on the nation­al lev­el and to not have that because of a rushed count, I think, is real­ly not fair to Col­oradans,” Win­bourn said.

Col­orado ranks 16th in the nation in self-response rates, accord­ing to Lau­rie Cipri­ano, a spokesper­son for the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau.

As of Aug. 24, Dou­glas and Jef­fer­son coun­ties had the state’s high­est self-response rates at about 80% and almost 79% respec­tive­ly. Hins­dale and Min­er­al coun­ties had the low­est rates at almost 18% and almost 24% respectively.

This is the first year that the cen­sus has been con­duct­ed pri­mar­i­ly online, and that has actu­al­ly helped with respons­es dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Cipri­ano said.

“We’re on the virus’ time­line, as is the rest of the coun­try,” she said. “We have to adjust to meet our con­sti­tu­tion­al obligation.”