It was not what she had planned.

It was the final day to vote. To avoid crowds and the coronavirus, Mullen had tried to mail in a ballot. But after she made several attempts to contact Fulton County officials and even the secretary of state's office to correct a discrepancy with her mailing address, her ballot never arrived.

When she pulled up to her precinct at 6:40 a.m., just a few miles southeast of downtown, a long line of voters already stretched around the block.

The doors opened at 7 a.m., but 30 minutes passed, then an hour, then two hours. Still, the line had barely moved. After nearly four hours in the Atlanta heat and off-and-on rain, Mullen was finally able to cast her ballot -- "just tired and worn out."

"And as bad as I felt, I felt more so for other people," Mullen says now.

Indeed, the situation faced by many voters was far worse -- particularly in the Atlanta area. Voters faced eight-hour lines. Hundreds of voters in Fulton County never received absentee ballots they had requested. And polling places in 18 counties -- including many outside metro Atlanta -- were forced to stay open late to accommodate everyone who was already waiting when polls closed.

As the Covid-19 pandemic exploded in the US, dozens of states held primary elections. Perhaps none went as badly awry as the June 9 vote in Georgia -- and the long lines that appeared again in the first days of early voting for the general election this week were a sign that history might be repeating.

Voting rights have long been an issue in Georgia, and now demographic changes have turned it into a battleground state. A competitive presidential race and two Senate races that could determine the chamber's balance of power have placed the state's election infrastructure squarely under the microscope.

The problems in the primary have only fed distrust and anger over barriers to voting that still exist in Georgia. And with the secretary of state's office saying it expects heavy turnout again on November 3, plus a new voting system in use statewide, some fear Georgia is at risk of another election meltdown.

Finger-pointing gives way to some fixes

In the aftermath of the June 9 debacle, there was no shortage of finger-pointing.

Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger blamed the counties, which are in charge of the nuts and bolts of putting on elections. Fulton County elections officials said they felt overwhelmed by the turnout and an unprecedented onslaught of absentee ballots.

All pointed to a perfect storm of events triggered by Covid-19.

Polling precincts and poll workers backed out due to concerns over the virus. Fulton County lost around a quarter of its polling places, and roughly 6 out of every 7 of its poll workers, according to Rick Barron, the county's elections director.

And with in-person training for poll workers suspended, the ones who remained had little experience with the new voting machines that the state purchased in 2019, he said.

"We weren't able to train any poll workers in person with a brand-new voting system b