OCEANSIDE – More than a week after the election and facing nearly insurmountable odds, Tri-City Healthcare District officials say they are still hopeful that Proposition F will pass and provide the dollars to renovate Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside.
The county Registrar of Voters Office released its latest tally at 5 p.m. yesterday that showed Proposition F failing by less than one percentage point. Countywide, 12,500 absentee and provisional ballots remain to be counted. It is that unknown element that buoys district officials.
The $596 million bond measure needs a two-thirds majority, or 66.7 percent of the vote, to pass. The latest tally shows the measure garnering 65.79 percent of the 51,929 votes counted.
County election officials say they don't know how many of the remaining 12,500 uncounted ballots come from the health care district, which spans most of Oceanside, Carlsbad and Vista.
Typically, the provisional and absentee ballots are proportional to the number of overall votes in any given election, officials said. In other words, because the district accounts for about 10 percent of voters countywide, about 10 percent of the outstanding ballots probably would come from the district.
The only way Proposition F could win would be for nearly 14 percent of the remaining ballots to come from the district and all of them with votes in favor of the measure.
Still, health care officials say they'll bide their time until the registrar finishes the count.
“We're going to wait,” district spokesman Jeff Segall said. “It's not over until it's over.”
Whatever the election outcome, the district is faced with a 2013 state deadline that requires hospitals to meet tougher earthquake standards. Proposition F money was to have paid for that work. The district is not yet considering options to retrofit the hospital while the last of the votes are tallied, Segall said.
County Registrar Mikel Haas said yesterday that after the June 6 election his office underestimated the number of provisional and absentee ballots that needed to be counted. On election night, the projection was 68,500 ballots. The actual number has turned out to be more than 90,000, Haas said.
For now, election officials continue to wade through the ballots and Haas said his office is hoping to certify the results by June 30.
Staff writer Michele Clock contributed to this report.
Matthew Rodriguez:
(760) 476-8245; matthew.rodriguez@uniontrib.com
