LOS ANGELES — Faulty ballot information from one county temporarily cast doubt on the Nov. 2 defeat of a statewide proposition in California that would have mandated health insurance coverage.
But Proposition 72, which would have imposed the requirement on employers with 50 or more workers, is dead, said a spokeswoman for California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley.
The fate of the measure was uncertain Tuesday night after Shelley’s Web site showed it was suddenly ahead based on figures from 17 counties that finished counting absentee and provisional ballots. Those results — posted for four hours — were the result of incorrect numbers provided by San Diego County.
The final tally showed that Proposition 72 got 49.1 percent of the ballots, losing by 202,854 votes.
“That’s final, but it won’t be official till we produce the statement of vote on Dec. 11,” said Caren Daniels-Meade, a spokeswoman for Shelley. “But we’re confident that the results will remain the same.”
The proposition was a referendum on the Health Insurance Act of 2003 (SB2) passed by the legislature and former Gov. Gray Davis. The California Labor Federation and the California Medical Association were among the supporters of the measure, which sought to extend health insurance to 1 million uninsured Californians.
The measure would have cost employers $12.4 billion to $12.9 billion a year, according to a study by the Employment Policies Institute in Washington. The study’s author, Aaron Yelowitz, an associate professor of labor and health economics at the University of Kentucky, also argued that it would lead to the loss of 67,000 to 150,000 jobs, as employers sought greater efficiency from employees.