According to the final, still-unofficial tally of votes in Tuesday’s spaceport tax referendum in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, yes beat no by 270 votes, out of 17,770 votes cast. About 19 percent of registered voters in the county voted in the special election, with the spaceport tax being the only item on the ballot: county officials said that turnout, while low for a special election, was relatively high for a special election like this. Spaceport opponents, while disappointed in losing, believe they still hold the moral high ground. “It’s now at the point where we have the luxury, in two or three years, to say ‘I told you so,'” said Mitch Boyer, leader of a group that opposed the tax. “I can tell you right now [the spaceport] is not going to happen.” Two other southern New Mexico counties, Otero and Sierra, are also considering similar taxes, although it’s not clear when they would hold elections on them.
[…] cost: about $2.3 million. Yet the election is considered key to the spaceport’s development. A similar tax was narrowly approved a year ago in neighboring, more populous Doña Ana County, which includes the city of Las Cruces. […]