Boards of Election across New York will be counting an unprecedented amount of absentee ballots in the next few weeks. 

"It's a detail-oriented tedious process," attorney Frank Housh said.

The Erie County Board of Elections will start counting absentee ballots on July 1.

"The first thing you need to make a determination when it is an absentee ballot is whether or not the absentee ballot is a valid ballot," Housh said.

The Board of Elections envelope is removed and discarded. What should remain is a sealed envelope, signed and dated by the voter, with the ballot enclosed.

"Then what happens is the Board of Elections, under supervision, formally opens all of the ballots. Then they count all of the ballots in a machine the same way they would count any other paper ballot," Housh said.

He knows the procedure inside and out because he's been in the room, representing campaigns many times.

"A lot. A dozen," he said.

Once the ballots go through the machine the campaigns and BOE officials begin going through the ballots one by one to determine if they really are valid. They're looking for things like if they were postmarked on time and if the signature on the ballot matches the signature on record.

Housh said typically more absentee ballots are invalidated than ballots that were cast at the polls, but that's only because at the polls verification is done before the vote is cast.

"If someone clearly voted for my client's opponent and I have no reason to dispute that ballot, I'm not going to dispute that ballot. I'm not going to seek to disenfranchise someone simply because they voted for somebody else," he said.

Depending on the election, some years they may only be looking at a dozen ballots, other times thousand. But this year, because of the coronavirus pandemic there are more than ever.

Erie County alone has already received north of 140,000.

"It's unknown territory," Housh said.

Because of the unprecedented situation, he said it's hard to speculate what problems they'll run into.

"The challenges are mostly for the Boards of Election," Housh said. "It's a labor challenge."

He said he's not representing any campaign yet, but he actually hopes to be by the time they start counting next week.

"I'd be disappointed if I wasn't," Housh said. "That is the very heart of the Democracy."

The attorney said, the public will need to be patient this year, just because of the sheer amount of ballots the process will take longer.