BART to San Jose, Back From the Dead
Measure B final resultsreleased
By LISA BERNARD
Updated 4:56 PM PST, Fri, Nov 21, 2008
It seemed doomed to fail on election night and for most of the following week.
Measure B, which would help bring BART to San Jose, didn't have seem to have the votes when the polls closed on Nov. 4.
But now, by all accounts the measure has been resurrected from the dead.
Buried the thousands of provisional ballots, mostly cast by younger voters, were just enough "yes" votes for the measure to pass.
BART backers held a victory party Friday afternoon.
When the Santa Clara County registrars office started counting the votes, Measure B stood at 66.27% in the "yes" column.
It was four-tenths of a percentage point short of the 2/3 required for victory.
But as the registrar sifted through about 164,000 absentee and provisional ballots, the "yes" vote started to climb.
This past Monday, Measure B reached 66.67%.
By Friday, it had reached 66.78%. That is .07 more than needed.
The win means an additioanl 1/8 of a cent sales tax in Santa Clara County will collected, but only after $750 million in federal funding is secured.
Bringing BART to San Jose is expected to create thousands of construction jobs in the short term and thousands of permanent jobs in the long run.
First Published: Nov 21, 2008 9:32 AM PST
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