Kat Meyer

Assoc. Community News Editor

Despite controversial issues like a gay rights amendment and a contentious Detroit mayoral race, long lines at polling places throughout west Michigan were not a problem for voters.

With voter turn out of less than 25 percent, State Legislator Kwame Kirlpatrick made history Tuesday as Detroit's youngest elected mayor at 31 years old.

Kirlpatrick won with 56 percent of the vote, defeating Gill Hill, a 30-year veteran of the Detroit Police Department.

Amendments barring gay rights legislation were overturned in Kalamazoo and two other Michigan cities Tuesday. Gay rights activists took it as a signal of growing tolerance among voters, although voter turnout was only average. The Kalamazoo measure would have blocked the city from passing laws protecting gays.

Voter turnout in Lansing was only 16 percent--a 50-year low--despite an anticipated surge of patriotism since the Sept. 11 attacks that never materialized.

Lansing businessman Tom Powers voted after closing his shop at 6 p.m.

``I have a really short fuse with people who complain and don't vote,'' he told the Lansing State Journal. ``Win or lose, I feel like I should exercise my right to vote.''

Turnout across west Michigan was equally poor. Only 8.7 percent of Wyoming voters, 24 percent of Walker voters, 11 percent of Coopersville voters and 6.9 percent of Grand Rapids voters participated in the elections.

According to a report by the Grand Rapids Press, west Michigan's prominent reaction was `no': `no' to Sunday booze and a new sewer authority in Grandville, `no' to an expanded ice arena in Walker, `no' to allowing Grand Rapids commissioners to run for other offices and `no' to a city charter change in Hudsonville.

By contrast, the proposed city charter anti-gay rights amendment fueled a large turn out at the polls, where it was rejected by 54 percent of voters. Traverse City and Huntington Woods refused similar ballot proposals by almost the same margins.

Hudsonville voters said `no' to a proposal to limit the kinds of petitions residents can file with the City Commission, after controversy last year in which the city spent about $20,000 in legal fees to defend an alcohol ban that voters approved--but that most city officials felt was illegal and unenforceable. Later an Ottawa County Circuit Court Judge later threw out the law, saying it was unconstitutional.

New Coopersville City Council member, Bradley Sprague Sr. owes his political career, literally, to his wife Janice, who cast the last vote shortly before 8pm on Tuesday night.