July 4 includes a remarkable discharge of fireworks of all kinds on the ocean beach.

There can be no better showcase of the importance of voting than the Ocean Beach Hospital bond, with its fate hanging by as little as a single vote out of more than 5,500 cast.

As of this writing, the bond is failing by three-100ths of a percent — just an eyelash short of the required 60%.

With around 40 ballots remaining to be added to the tally this week, it’s still just barely possible that it might squeak by. If there are any nail-biters among the bond’s most dedicated supporters and opponents, they may need to stock up on Band-aids before this Friday’s final tally.

Close may only count in horseshoes, hand grenades and teenage crushes, but it’s impossible not to sympathize with the frustration hospital leaders and personnel must be feeling. If the bond does fail, the board will obviously have to decide when and how to try again.

The most glaring example of trying for a redo on a bond happened years ago when an early effort to rebuild local schools initially failed by just a little, and then failed by even more after the same plan was served up a second time. Was this a one-off? It’s hard to say.

Fireworks

Last week’s other major ballot issue provided elected officials with an indication from citizens about whether they want to end the sale and use of consumer fireworks in the city of Long Beach and the peninsula’s unincorporated areas.

A ban looks likely inside Long Beach. But county commissioners didn’t get the super-majority 60% pro-ban vote they said they required for unincorporated areas. This could result in the mess of a ban in Ilwaco (which controls a short stretch of beach in the Beards Hollow area) and in Long Beach, but no ban in Seaview and north of Long Beach. As our story on page A3 indicates, there is some cause for concern that this will make enforcement even more of a quandary than it might otherwise be.

And then there’s the separate important question of what Washington State Parks decides about fireworks on the beach itself. The beach is clearly the biggest problem when it comes to out-and-out chaos, being one of few locations in western Washington and Oregon where virtually anything goes in term of fireworks — and some other forms of behavior.

A couple of observations:

• We tend to agree with those who say 60% is an artificially high threshold before county commissioners take a stand on fireworks. It’s awfully hard to get 60% approval for anything, as the hospital bond shows.

• It is astounding that State Parks is OK with what happens on the beach on and near July 4.

• Oregon-type restrictions on fireworks that fly or explode would not be a horrible compromise.

• And as we’ve suggested in the past, further narrowing the legal window for selling and discharging them is an option — although it would appear that the “Ban the Boom” approach represents a hardened position that would not happily live with even two or three nights of noise.

In any event, it’s well past time to come to actual firm decisions about this issue.