The primary election is over, but election staff is still working to ensure every vote is counted.

The director of elections said ballot canvassing should wrap up Friday and their next steps will follow soon after.

The 2023 May primary election has come and gone.

Staff of the Erie County Election Office are now moving into their next steps with the ballots.

“Today we are taking a look at 462 mail-in ballots that were damaged and we’re transcribing those, recreating them, so we can scan those and get those results. Then also we have 84 provisional ballots that were cast at the polls that we’re counting today,” said Tonia Fernandez, director of elections for the Erie County Election Office.

But what makes a ballot considered damaged?

“If the machine is unable to read, it’ll kind of spit it back out and then we have to recreate it onto a scannable ballot,” Fernandez answered.

Although the polls are closed, Fernandez said there are more ballots to be added to the total count.

“The total of these results will be included with the results from election night,” Fernandez said.

The director of elections told us what comes next after canvassing and counting is complete.

“We haven’t certified anything, yet the board of elections still needs to do a first signing which will probably wait until we’re done adjudicating. So today after we’re done with our final counts, we’ll begin looking at the write-in votes and we expect that process to take us about a week,” Fernandez explained.

Fernandez said ambiguous marks, over votes, under votes, and determination on voters’ intent will also be reviewed.

Fernandez said their goal was to have the canvassing of ballots complete earlier this afternoon.