SCRANTON, Pa. — Workers in county election offices across the state have a big task ahead of them on Election Day and the days that follow.
They will count an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots.
In Lackawanna County, it's an effort that has taken months and thousands of man-hours to prepare for.
The Lackawanna County Bureau of Elections has been preparing to handle more mail-in ballots since last year after a change in state law.
But then the pandemic hit.
Now, they expect to count more than 40,000 mail-in votes.
After a ballot is mailed or dropped in an official election dropbox in Lackawanna County, it goes to the Lackawanna County Government Center at The Globe on Wyoming Avenue.
The process of counting those ballots starts at 7 a.m. on Election Day.
Lackawanna County Chief of Staff Brian Jeffers walked Newswatch 16 through the government center that will turn into a ballot counting headquarters overnight.
But, it has really been a months-long process that picked up when ballots started arriving in early October.
"From October 6th up until today, it's been nonstop, we've had probably anywhere between 25 and 30 workers upstairs doing this every single day, weekends, holidays, you name it, they've been there," Jeffers said.
The county has been pulling workers from all different departments to sort through the mail-in ballots.
On election day, they will open them all up first before counting them.
Back in June for the primary, they had to do that all by hand.
The county has since purchased an envelope opening machine that workers hope will save them several hours.
They expect that counting all the mail-in ballots will take a total of 17 hours.
"We want everyone's vote to count, so we'll stay here as long as it takes to get it done. We'll try to push through. If we're close at midnight, we're going to push through the middle of the night. If not, we're going to have to come back on Wednesday," Jeffers added.
It is possible that the winners in Lackawanna County will be known sometime on Wednesday.
To put in perspective how many mail-in ballots need to be counted, there are about 150,000 registered voters in Lackawanna County.
A little less than a third of those voters submitted a mail-in ballot.