Updated at 5:58 p.m.
The most official count of the country鈥檚 population was released by the today.
Colorado is getting an extra seat in congress because of the count, Bureau officials announced Monday, Only five other states gained seats from this count, with Texas gaining two.
"I think some of the little metrics that are interesting is that Colorado increased by that 14.8%. So almost twice as fast as the U.S. as a whole," said Elizabeth Garner, Colorado鈥檚 state demographer in the Department of Local Affairs. "We changed rank. We're now (the) 21st largest state instead of 22nd. So we surpassed Minnesota."
"While no census is perfect, we are confident that today's 2020 census results meet our high data quality standards," Ron Jarmin, Acting Director, U.S. Census Bureau said Monday. "We would not be releasing them to you otherwise."
This number tells the federal government how much tax money it owes Colorado for various programs, like food assistance and COVID-19 relief funds.
But there is a lot that number won鈥檛 be able to show, like the population of Fort Collins, Logan County or any of the state鈥檚 other cities, towns and counties. It won鈥檛 tell Colorado how many Black people or children or renters live in those places and in the state overall.
Colorado鈥檚 government needs those numbers to distribute local and federal tax dollars for conservation and other programs within its borders. Small business owners and entrepreneurs need those numbers to decide where to build their storefronts and ask for loans. Local officials need them to apply for grants and to manage wildfire recovery.
The 2020 census count was thrown off track by the pandemic and long legal, political battles, leading the Bureau to announce it needed more time to check the count for errors, like people being counted in the wrong place, more than once or not at all.
'Regardless of what we do, we're going to be sued'
One of the biggest examples of the important role local census data plays is in Colorado鈥檚 Independent Redistricting Commission. The commission must use those numbers to draw the political district maps that decide who everyone will be voting alongside for the next decade.
The data needed to begin redistricting will be out by Aug. 16, Bureau officials said during Monday's announcement. That data will be in a "legacy" format that redistricting staff will have to process themselves and it will likely not be sufficient for the commission's final maps, commission staff told KUNC.
The necessary full local results could come out as late as after the commission鈥檚 to submit a map to the state Supreme Court for approval.
Redistricting commissioners and lawmakers worry that waiting to use the final census data (as the state constitution requires) will force the commissions to miss deadlines. That could result in lawsuits and mess with the 2022 election calendar. However, using data other than the official results could also result in lawsuits and invalidated maps.
鈥淩egardless of what we do, we're going to be sued,鈥� Congressional Redistricting Commissioner Danny Moore said during one of the group鈥檚 meetings last week. 鈥淭his is why we're seeking legal counsel to do this.鈥�
passed committee on Monday with bipartisan support. It aims to avoid future lawsuits by asking the state Supreme Court to allow the commission to use old census data to draw preliminary maps and move on to its public comment duties. If successful, the commission鈥檚 final maps will still have to use full census count data.
鈥淚 want the process to continue to move forward. I want us to find a way to start drawing maps, even with preliminary data,鈥� said Commissioner John Kelly. 鈥淏ut I don't think it's fair to the public to draw maps on data that's not the final data and then bring final data and to make any sort of adjustments without a comment period or something like that.鈥�
Accuracy concerns remain
Many officials and experts have been raising the alarm about the count鈥檚 accuracy since it began last year, as the pandemic halted outreach efforts while simultaneously elongating and compressing the timeline to count households that didn鈥檛 respond on their own. But on while releasing results Monday, Census officials repeatedly backed the count's veracity.
"I assured the president that the census was complete and accurate," said Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo.
It may not be clear how accurate the data released today actually is. The Census Bureau will release like the number of people who had to be counted using official records because they didn鈥檛 respond to the census themselves. But a full accuracy assessment won鈥檛 be available until the end of 2021.
"One of the ways that we measure the quality of the census is to compare to our population estimates. Of course, our population estimates are based on the last census and built forward, adding birth, subtracting deaths, adding in migration," said Victoria Velkoff, the Bureau's associate director for demographic programs. "So most states are within 1% of our population estimates, which makes us feel very good about those census counts."
The number is also less than 1% smaller than the state's own population estimate, which used many of the same benchmarks the Bureau did, according to Elizabeth Garner, Colorado鈥檚 state demographer in the Department of Local Affairs.
"I had put in my little guesstimate for Colorado is right at 5.8 million," Garner told KUNC after the results were announced. "So this is about 27,000, a little bit lower than what we thought, but that's still less than 1%."
And even if the state-level data is mostly accurate (as it was in 2010), that doesn鈥檛 mean local level and demographic data will be
The elongated data-review timeline eased some of the accuracy concerns for officials like Garner. But she鈥檚 still approaching the results cautiously.
"We're going to continue our efforts," she said. "So we will really be able to evaluate a lot of changes in Colorado as well as housing units to make sure that things were counted the way that they should be. And we'll use those estimates to evaluate the census counts that come out."
That local data might be able to help the state correct any inaccurate numbers in the census' yearly estimates, she said, which happen between the once-a-decade full counts. Adjusting those estimates will also adjust federal tax allocation during those years.
