Copyright© 2004 by School Services
of California, Inc.
Volume 17
For Publication
Date: December 17, 2004
No. 24
By the Way . . .
Secretary of State’s Office Finally
Certifies Failure of Proposition 72. Vote counts tallied the day
after the election showed that Proposition 72, a referendum on a law passed last
year by the Legislature (SB 2), had failed by a narrow margin. But, for a month,
the election results were too close to call. Now that all
California
counties have finished reporting the vote tallies from the November 2 election
to the Secretary of State’s office, it appears voters defeated the measure
requiring employers to provide health insurance to workers. According to the
final vote count, Proposition 72 lost by a margin of 1.9%—about 200,000 votes
out of 11.5 million recorded.
Right after the election, the
vote was uncertain because of a clerical error made by
San Diego
County
. According to a spokesperson from the Secretary of State’s office, a column
of numbers in the report filed by
San Diego
was misaligned, causing the wrong numbers to be included in the Proposition 72
column.
According to the Sacramento Bee, about 63% of
Californians have health insurance through employment, while 17% are uninsured.
Supporters of Proposition 72 estimated that the measure would have extended
coverage to about 1 million people.