OBSERVER Photo by Natasha Matteliano Poll workers Hannah Abram, Maureen Davis and Mary Croxton wait for voters to cast their ballots at the Wheelock School poll location in Dunkirk.

Voters headed to the polls Tuesday for the state’s primary election.

Polls opened in the area at 6 a.m. and closed at 9 p.m., but the final results may not be known for a while due to absentee ballots not being counted for at least a week. All New York voters have the ability to vote by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is what state election officials are expecting most voters to do.

At the Joseph J. Steger Apartment building voting site in Dunkirk, poll workers expressed that the vast majority of people in the area do not feel uncomfortable voting in person.

“People do not seem uncomfortable at all voting in person,” one poll worker said. “We’ve had a little over a dozen voters here so far and we are following all of the social distancing guidelines.”

The poll site was not very busy, which could be due to voters mailing in their ballots, but may also be because former Vice President Joe Biden is the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic party.

The poll worker explained, “There’s nothing for anybody to really vote for here in Chautauqua County, since the nominee is already Joe Biden. There’s nothing else to vote for besides the delegates.”

The Wheelock School poll location saw 81 voters by 5 p.m., including mostly Democrats, with one Libertarian voter. Both voting locations were practicing strict social distancing guidelines, including sanitizing where people had been and things they touched and requiring masks to enter the buildings.

The results of the primary election will take time to count because of the mail-in ballots that voters were encouraged to use by officials.