During a quiet summer election, one clerk practices to make future elections smoother

On one of her two purple phones, Livonia City Clerk Lori Miller has a sticker that proudly proclaims “I [purple heart emoji] Boring Elections.”

And on Aug. 5 that’s just what she got. Elections in her city and across the state were uneventful, a welcome gift to clerks who are bracing for a busy 2026.

Miller used the primary in Livonia, a Detroit suburb in Wayne County, as an opportunity to test out some upgrades ahead of a competitive city council race in November and next year’s elections for the U.S. House and Senate, state legislative seats, governor, and other statewide offices.

“We’re trying a lot of things,” Miller told Votebeat as she helped to close out absent voter counting boards at the end of the night. “I didn’t want to do them last year, with so many other things happening, and I want to be ready for next year.”

Miller is relatively new to the job — her first general election as clerk was last year’s presidential contest. She said she’s focused on improving processes and ensuring elections run smoothly. That includes steps like consolidating precincts, which is allowed under a state law that reflects voters’ increased interest in absentee and early voting, and reorganizing the way absentee ballots are stored, allowing counting boards to finish sooner.

And, for the most part, it worked.

The precinct consolidation did confuse some voters who’d voted for years at a different polling location or precinct number. The city posted signs outside each polling place, but some voters still wondered if they were at the right place.

“We’ve voted at the same place for 30 years,” Natalie Shields, a Livonia voter, told Votebeat after casting her ballot at a new precinct housed at Riley Upper Elementary School. “Now we have a new number, a new place — it’s just frustrating to try to figure this all out.”

Despite these short-term impacts, Miller said there were plenty of reasons for the change: It will save money in the long term by allowing her to maintain fewer machines and bring on fewer workers for smaller elections. It can be difficult to find people prepared to work shifts that easily stretch past 14 hours.

It’s also given her leverage to push for higher pay for election workers to make the job more appealing. That proposal is still moving through the city’s budget process.

The city sent out cards to voters with their new precincts and voting locations, and posted signs that said which old precincts became which new ones. Even so, poll workers said, nearly every voter they spoke to questioned if they were at the right place. Some were sent to other locations, but most were able to cast their ballots as expected.

Whatever confusion resulted didn’t appear to diminish turnout. The city of 95,000 has just under 75,000 registered voters, and 27,571 of them cast ballots in Aug. 5’s election — or about 37%. That’s high for an August election, bolstered by a huge slate of 17 candidates running for city council and a contentious bond proposal to fund new city buildings. By comparison, in Detroit — where voters were picking out candidates for the first open mayoral race in more than a decade — fewer than 17% of registered voters cast ballots in Aug. 5’s election.

More than 9,000 Livonia voters turned out to vote in person, leading to a steady stream of voters at nearly every polling place all day. The rest of the city’s voters cast their ballots either early or absentee. About a third of the city’s registered voters received mailed absentee ballots. That was one reason she felt confident consolidating precincts: Most voters now take advantage of expanded early voting and the right to no-excuse absentee voting, both enshrined in the state’s constitution through voter referendums in 2018 and 2022.

“People like those options,” Miller said. “My job is to make sure they’re able to use them.”

But that’s not her only job, especially on Election Day. She spent the day shuttling between polling places, troubleshooting minor problems that arose and ensuring that voter assist terminals — designed for voters with disabilities but open for anyone to use — were set up properly. Once the polls closed, she changed out of her red “Livonia City Clerk’s Office” shirt into a navy blue blouse and went live on Facebook, YouTube, and local TV, a Livonia tradition, to quickly share results with the public.

Back at City Hall, the counting of absentee ballots went on all day. Starting as early as 7 a.m., four teams of half a dozen people or more counted continually at tables on the top floor. With more than 17,000 ballots coming in early, Miller’s team needed a better system to sort and process them. Enter a new idea, borrowed from fellow clerks in neighboring downriver communities (who in turn borrowed it from a clerk in tiny Houghton County in the Upper Peninsula): Sort ballots by the date they’re received, not by precinct.

It allowed them to better count each day’s results, leading to smoother final tallies and much faster paperwork.

So on Aug. 5, in a conference room decorated with posters that depicted city officials as movie stars — City Emergency Preparedness Director Brian Kahn featured in a “Wrath of Kahn” mockup, for instance — the city’s four absentee voter counting boards gave it go.

“We learned a lot here tonight,” Miller said, standing beneath her face superimposed on a poster for the 2014 football film “Draft Day,” instead, reading “Election Day.” “We’ll do it all again next time.”

This story was produced by Votebeat and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.