Brian Hook at Missouri Watchdog has a solid report on yesterday’s health-care referenda. A sample:
The message has been sent to Washington D.C. More than 70 percent of voters who showed up at the polls across Missouri do not want the federal government to require them to buy health insurance.
On a day with temperatures that topped 100 degrees outside, less than one million voters – out of more than four million registered voters in Missouri — turned out to vote on Proposition C, with 667,680 voting yes and 271,102 voting no, according to unofficial election returns from the secretary of state’s office.
Prop C in Missouri was the first statewide vote concerning the federal government’s 2010 health care reform, although similar ballot initiatives are scheduled in other states around the country.
Opponents of the legislatively-referred statute outspent supporters four to one. The registered campaign backing Prop C, Missourians for Health Care Freedom, hoped to raise $100,000 by election day.
In contrast, the Missouri Hospital Association, representing more than 150 hospitals across Missouri, spent more than $400,000 to send out mailers to homes across the state. A spokesperson for the MHA told Missouri Watchdog, however, that the group did not recommend a vote in either direction.