BUFFALO, N.Y. — The number of people who took advantage of early voting in Western New York was enough to astound local elections officials. But does that mean you'll be able to sail through on Tuesday without any waiting if you decided to wait and cast your ballot on Election Day.
Through nine days of early voting, nearly 168,000 of Erie County's 630,000 registered voters cast their ballots in advance of Election Day.
However, when you add in an additional 77,000 mailed in ballots already received by Monday (and with many more expected to come) that means that about 39 percent of voters have already executed their civic duty.
In an ordinary year, having nearly 40 percent of the vote already in hand might make for a lack of lines at the polls come Tuesday. But remember, this is no ordinary year, with a contentious presidential race expected to bring a record turnout.
This may mean that despite the record number of votes already registered, you could find yourself waiting.
The advice often given every year the first time snow falls enough to affect one's morning commute may be applicable here as well: leave yourself some extra time, just to make sure that you can vote.
When Various Votes will be Tallied
In Erie County, when the polls close, the early votes will be tabulated right away, and because nearly 27 percent of registered voters in the county cast their ballots early, a significant total of the vote will known just after 9 p.m.
The situation will be similar in Chautauqua County, according to its democratic Elections Commissioner Norman Green.
"We will have the early voting results right at 9 p.m., I can assure you of that," Green told WGRZ-TV, adding that — barring any unforeseen issues — votes cast by machines on Election Day will be tallied within a couple of hours after that.
In Niagara County it will be slightly different, according to its democratic Elections Commissioner Lora Allen.
"Our early day votes will be tabulated and read along with election day votes like always," said Allen. "They're not going to be released beforehand."
While this means that both the results of the early votes and those cast on Tuesday should be known by late on election night, the same cannot be said about the record number of mail-in ballots across the region.
Those votes, which must be postmarked on Tuesday in order to be counted, are expected to continue to trickle in for several days after the election. Therefore, they won't be entirely tallied for a period of weeks.
This means that in certain races that are close, not only will the outcome not be known on election night, but in cases where the vote is tight enough to warrant a recount or in which individual votes may be challenged, a winner might not be declared until late November.
While absentee ballots generally mirror the results of machine votes cast on Election Day, a recent example showed that is not always the case.
During the special election held in June for Congress in the 27th District, Republican Chris Jacobs held a 28,000 vote advantage over his democratic challenger Nate McMurray after the machine ballots were tabulated that night.
However, after absentee ballots were counted, Jacobs ended up winning by fewer than 10,000 votes.
It was still sizeable margin of victory, to be sure, but did illustrate that not every tradition may hold true,
Especially this year.
