With just over two months until the presidential election, Maryland officials have recruited about two-thirds of the approximately 25,100 poll workers they will need to manage early voting and Election Day.

Earlier this month, the state was facing a shortage of more than 14,000 workers due to the pandemic. In the past few weeks, recruiting efforts have made a dent, says David Garreis, president of the Maryland Association of Election Officials. The association and local boards of elections have recruited roughly 17,100 workers. That includes at least 11,000 Marylanders Gov. Larry Hogan says his administration has successfully drafted.

In a letter to Garreis Wednesday, Hogan wrote that his administration has incentivized the state’s 65,000 employees to serve as poll workers by offering 16 hours of paid administrative leave for each day worked at the polls. Hogan says the state has also contacted 167,000 staffers and students at the state’s colleges and universities.

“We continue to encourage all of our state agencies to regularly and actively promote the need for election judges on their homepages and social media platforms,” Hogan wrote in the letter. Elections judges is another term for poll workers.

Even with the success, Garreis says local boards of elections are still in need of support.

“It’s like pushing a boulder up a hill,” he said. “You just have to keep working at it.”

Because poll workers back out of their shifts for any number of reasons before Election Day, election officials will need to recruit extra people to work the polls — just in case. This week, Garreis said he had one county with 10 provisional election judges who are expected to run the polls, but three dropped out.

“We ask people if you’ve expressed interest and don’t hear from us, definitely contact us,” Garreis said. “We’re going to keep recruiting through Election Day.”

On Friday, the Maryland Board of Elections will meet to finalize the list voting centers for counties. That will give election officials a better idea of how many judges they will need.