At the Onondaga County Board of Elections in Syracuse, the hard work is just beginning after election night. The staff has yet to begin counting the nearly 30,000 absentee ballots. This week is all about preparation and making sure every vote is valid and counted.

“We're prepared,” said Onondaga County Board of Elections Democratic Commissioner Dustin Czarny. “We’ve been worried about this since the middle of May, since the new rules came into place. We’ve been preparing to get them in.”

It’s business as usual at the Board of Elections. Workers are going through the ballots from Tuesday night, notating, sorting, and validating ballots. Then they’ll make sure all votes are returned and secured, before they finish, there is an audit of the unofficial results. And they're not done coming in.

“We're going to continue to receive them from the mail and continue to receive them through our polling places in the next couple of days. we have until June 30 to receive the ballots that were postmarked yesterday,” said Czarny.

Meaning, the majority of votes won’t be counted until next week. Czarny says typically absentee makes up about 3-5 percent of votes. This year, it’s about 65 percent. 

“We’ve been very clear about expectations we don’t expect to have certified results until July 8 or 9 at least,” said Czarny.

State guidelines say the board of elections has no more than eight days to count all the ballots. But Czarny says that’s for a normal election year. 

“The days are an expectation and a guideline, but they’ve been broken in many other races in the history of this state, and I don’t think we’ll be alone,” Czarny.

About 18 people will be counting the thousands of ballots. Czarny asks for patience for certified results.

“This is an unprecedented election, and I can’t give you estimates on something that’s never happened before. All I can say is being fair and accurate is more important,” said Czarny.

Nearly 40,000 people voted in this year’s primary.