(Note: Measure J ended up with 66.11% of the vote.)

Steve Hymon writes: As of late Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Registrar told KCET that there were 792,658 ballots remaining to be counted in Los Angeles County. The remaining ballots are either vote-by-mail ballots or provisional ballots.

Could this tip the scales in terms of Measure J? The answer: It’s possible but unlikely.

Thus far, the yes votes on Measure J are at 64.72 percent. Measure J needs 66.67 percent of the votes to be approved. In order to overcome that nearly two-point deficit, support for Measure would need to run in the 70 to 75 percent range among the remaining ballots.

We spent a lot of time pouring over the numbers Wednesday evening. There are a couple issues:

•About 10 percent of the votes cast thus far in L.A. County didn’t include a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on Measure J. That means it’s probable that some of the 792,658 of the remaining ballots do not include a Measure J vote one way or the other.

•We took a good look at the city-by-city results for Measure J and there just aren’t that many places in the county where support was running in the 70 to 75 percent range to help overcome the current two-point deficit — and it’s not likely all the remaining votes came from those places.

We have some nice maps on the J results that I’ll be posting shortly.

The national nonprofit Center for Transportation Excellence today reported that there were 21 sales tax measures on the ballot in 12 states on November 6. The success rate was 70% with four measures still undecided. CFTE reported there have been 500 sales tax measures for transportation on the ballot nationally since 2000 (62 of them in 2012) and that the success rate continues to trend upward, suggesting that people are willing to tax themselves for transportation investment.

The most prominent and closely watched ballot measures being watched by advocates throughout the US was Measure.

By our calculations Measure J would need upwards of  72% of that vote to push the measure to victory, but we can dare to dream.

Check it out here.

 

Residents and property owners in downtown LA are voting this week on a 30-year tax to support a downtown streetcar. It isn't a parcel tax exactly but a special tax incorporating a formula to take into account how close a property is to the streetcar. This is because studies of the Portland streetcar, for example, have shown that property values increased the most for properties closest to the streetcar.

A story in the LA Times notes that "all qualified voters who live in the district will be able to cast ballots, but a majority of them are renters and they wouldn’t be the ones paying the tax. The tax instead would fall on property owners in the district, so this is one time when residency trumps wealth. Depending on your point of view, that could be seen as welcome turnabout or profoundly unjust."

Since property values are factored into the rent or the sale price, we say it makes sense.

The Los Angeles City Council created the 397-acre, three-block Streetcar Community Facilities District last summer and 7,000 registered voters will cast their ballots.

Read more in the LA Times.

(Note: Measure J ended up with 66.11% of the vote.)

Measure J fell just short of the two-thirds supermajority threshold required to pass, with 64.7 percent of the vote. Says Denny Zane, executive director of Move LA, "Only in California is 65% a defeat instead of a landslide victory . . . and that has to change."

YES		1,367,357	64.72
NO		745,310	35.2

(Note: Measure J ended up with 66.11% of the vote.)

At 4:30 a.m. Measure J had 64.8% of the vote with 94% of the precincts reporting. That's shy of the 2/3 majority needed to win . .

Denny Zane said Measure J's early results — 65% of the vote with 14% of ballots in — were good enough to feel optimistic: "Any time you need two-thirds, it's a tight one through the night ... a small shift of votes can make a [big] difference," Denny told the LA Times:

 

 

Measure J at 65% with 14% reporting: http:///www.scpr.org

Because, he says, it will create jobs and clean up the environment: "While the nation debates how to put Americans back to work, Los Angeles' business, labor, civic, and political leaders have forged a bold plan to jump-start the area's economy. On Tuesday, Los Angeles County voters will decide the fate of this idea -- Measure J -- which will generate as many as 250,000 new local jobs by investing in public transportation.

"Measure J's supporters include an unlikely coalition, including the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and its regional affiliates; the LA County Federation of Labor, Unite HERE and many other labor unions; the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Lung Association, the League of Conservation Voters, Move LA, the LA County Bicycle Coalition, LA Voice, Pacoima Beautiful, the Southern California Association Non-Profit Housing, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News and other major papers, and a Who's Who of elected officials from the Los Angeles region.

"The plan is designed not only to help greater Los Angeles literally dig its way out of its recession but also to help improve the environment by getting more Angelenos out of their cars and into the region's growing subway, light rail, and bus services. . . .

Read it on Huffington Post.