It won’t be a typical election night on Tuesday after the polls close as candidates can’t start victory or concession speeches because all the votes haven’t been counted yet.

That’s because by law elections officials can’t start counting hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots statewide until Thursday morning.

Out of 498,444 mail-in ballots sent to voters, 190,955 had been returned as of July 17.

Candidates like Democrat Robbie Leonard, who is running for state’s attorney in Baltimore County, said election night parties are to express gratitude to volunteers.

“No one’s going to know who the winners are for 10 days after they’ve counted all of the mail-in ballots,” Leonard said.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perez blamed Gov. Larry Hogan for vetoing legislation that would have allowed the mail-in ballots to be counted in advance.

“Larry Hogan has single handedly slowed down the process. What does that do? That sows discontent. And that sows distrust,” Perez said.

Hogan said he supports counting mail-in ballots early but the legislation passed by the General Assembly lacked needed security measures.

There are 3.7 million eligible active voters on the rolls, of which 2.2 million are Democrats and 987,476 are Republicans.

During early voting 172,364 individuals cast their ballots in person. That's lower turnout than the last gubernatorial primary in 2018 when 222,100 individuals cast ballots during early voting.

Maryland is the only state in the nation that doesn’t allow mail-in votes to be counted until after the polls close.

Baltimore County Elections Director Ruie LaVoie said by law they cannot start counting the mail-in votes until 10 a.m. Thursday.

“Every night of the canvas I will upload the results for that day and add them to the total, the unofficial results, that were posted after 8 p.m. on Tuesday,” LaVoie said.

She said the county is planning to certify its election results on July 29. She said that’s the statewide certification day for all local boards.