Politics & Government

Recount Canceled for Alameda County Transportation Tax Measure

The Alameda County Transportation Commission has called off the recount of votes in the Nov. 6 narrow defeat of Measure B1, a proposed one-cent sales tax boost for transportation. The move follows a partial recount this week.

A recount of votes for the failed one-cent sales tax measure for Alameda County transportation has been halted by the Alameda County Transportation Commission.

The commission had requested the recount after Measure B1 narrowly missed the two-thirds vote needed for passage. It received 350,899 yes votes, or 66.53 percent of total votes cast. Had 400 ballots gone the other way, it would have passed.

The commission called off the recount this week after 28,000 ballots had been recounted and yielded only seven additional yes votes, the commission said in a news release.

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Anyone can request a recount, and the county Registrar of Voters is required to conduct one, according to Registrar of Voters Dave Macdonald. However, whoever requests the recount must pay for it.

The county transportation commission spent less than $8,000 on the partial recount, according to the news release.

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The measure would have raised an estimated $7.8 billion between 2013 and 2043 for various transportation-related projects, according to an analysis by the Oakland League of Women Voters.

“I am confident that the decision to request a recount was the right one, as was our decision to discontinue it,” the commission's executive director, Arthur Dao, said in the release. “Our Commission feels that performing due diligence was our obligation with a vote this close, and a transportation plan worth $8 billion dollars in local investment and thousands of jobs opportunities."

The commission had requested a recount of all the votes in Berkeley but called off the recount after 85 of the city's 96 precincts had been counted on Tuesday, according to a representative of the Registrar of Voters office.

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