The city saw about 25,708 registered voters turn out for this election.

The bond proposal would have reconfigured and renovated five of the city’s six elementary schools, putting more money toward technological improvements in buildings and consolidating grade levels.

The weeks and months leading up to the vote have drawn divisive lines between community members, with supporters arguing that the bond proposal would have increased educational opportunities for the district’s students, and opposing sides maintaining that the proposal was excessive.

East Lansing Public Schools Superintendent David Chapin said regardless of the outcome, the district must push forward.

“We regroup, and we acknowledge that there’s great interest in our public school district,” he said after results were posted.

East Lansing resident Jim Anderson, who advocated strongly for voting against the proposal, said he was “overjoyed” to hear the proposal was defeated.

“It’s been a terrifically hard-fought campaign and contested at an extremely high level,” he said.

Anderson said he thinks the school board still will look at a smaller bond proposal to tackle infrastructure improvements.

Supporters of the bond said the district’s schools are old and in need of upgrades, necessitating the investment, but others argued that the bond proposal was put on the ballot without proper community input.

The hot-button local issue, combined with Michigan’s Republican primary, likely drove more residents to the polls as a result, Assistant City Manager and City Clerk Marie McKenna said.

Within the first three hours of voting at Brody Hall, the site of precinct 1, only two people had voted. 50 people eventually ended up voting in precinct 1, according to final results.

In precinct 16, which includes the Red Cedar Neighborhood, more than 90 percent of residents voted against the proposal.

Despite the vote against the proposal, Red Cedar Elementary School is still expected to close sometime before 2016 after a controversial school board vote.