Tom Wolf signed no-excuse mail-in ballot voting and other reforms into law late last year, making the June 2 primary the first test of those changes.

Election officials throughout the critical battleground, which is implementing no-excuse mail-in voting for the first time ever amid a pandemic, say they are unlikely to finish counting those ballots the night of the general election.

Less than two weeks away from the state’s primary, some election officials in the state said they lack the needed funding and staff to handle the massive influx of mail-in ballots they’ve received for that race.

These are the things that are inevitable when you rush the implementation of mail-in voting like we did here,” said Allegheny County Democratic Councilwoman and election board member Bethany Hallam.

Tom Wolf signed no-excuse mail-in ballot voting and other reforms into law late last year, making the June 2 primary the first test of those changes.

In Philadelphia, the most populous part of the state, officials predicted before the pandemic that they would get 70,000 to 90,000 applications for mail-in and absentee ballots in the primary.

It has received more than 225,000 mail-in and absentee ballot applications through Thursday — compared to the 10,000 absentee ballots it gets in a typical presidential primary, officials said,.

Though election officials said they will process all of the mailed-in votes and that most of the errors with the ballots have been minor, they worry that news like thousands of ballots with flawed instructions being sent to voters in suburban Philadelphia’s Montgomery County will lead to increased suspicion of the new voting method.

Overall, though, 69 percent of applications processed for mail and absentee ballots in the state have come from Democratic voters, compared to 30 percent from Republicans, which some GOP insiders in the state blame on Trump’s opposition to the voting method

Trump has railed against mail voting, claiming without evidence that it is “a very dangerous thing for this country because they’re cheaters.” On Wednesday, he inaccurately said that Michigan — like Pennsylvania, a Rust Belt giant that is critical to the president’s path to reelection — is sending absentee ballots to 7.7 million voters and threatened to withhold funding to the state “if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path!”

Pennsylvania has not sent mail-in ballot applications to all eligible voters during the primary, though some local governments, such as Allegheny County, have

Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar is open to the possibility of sending mail-in ballot applications to every voter in the general election “with the necessary additional resources,” according to spokeswoman Wanda Murren

Boockvar also supports allowing election officials to start counting mail ballots before Election Day, but that would require action by the state legislature

Ahead of the primary, some election officials said that unrealistic deadlines mean some voters won’t get their mail-in ballots in time

Election officials throughout Pennsylvania said that the $14 million allocated to the state for election assistance in the CARES Act is far from enough