Citizens of *every* state have the right to see the *exact* vote count in their state.This is true for several reasons...one being that it can possibly expose voter fraud.
I believe they eventually do open them and record the results at some point. But there is no urgency unless the final result is in question. California recorded: 5,481,885 Clinton and 2,965,704 for Trump. Yet I heard one news source claim that CA and some other states do not always finalize the absentee totals.
The absentee totals were once very small quantities in relation to vote totals. However, in 2016, the absentee votes are in the millions.