Lines snaked out the doors, some polling locations didn’t open on time, and others had no working voting machines in at least four counties in the first hour of voting in Georgia’s primary elections Tuesday, a potential preview of how new voting procedures brought on by the coronavirus pandemic could affect the presidential election in November.

“This seems to be happening throughout Atlanta and perhaps throughout the county. People have been in line since before 7:00 am this morning,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted barely 30 minutes after polls opened Tuesday.

She added: “If you are in line, PLEASE do not allow your vote to be suppressed. PLEASE stay in line. They should offer you a provisional ballot if the machines are not working.”

Voters reported arriving before polls opened and standing in line for more than an hour, with election officials processing ballots painfully slowly because machines were not working.

Ron Clark, an Atlanta educator and author, wrote on social media that he tried to vote at a polling location in Central Park and watched poll workers processing provisional ballots by hand.

“They said all machines are broken and not working and that they reported it before today but no one responded,” Clark tweeted. “Hundreds in this line and in 50 minutes only 4 people have voted.”

The difficulties quickly triggered partisan accusations about who was to blame, with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger faulting Fulton County for failing to mail ballots in time, while Democrats said Raffensperger did not adequately prepare for the unprecedented surge of voter interest despite two delays of the primary date.

Voting rights advocates said a confluence of circumstances hit Tuesday: poor preparations for a surge in mail balloting, relatively new voting equipment that voters are not used to and heightened interest in voting among residents in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police.

Seth Bringman, a spokesman for former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s voting-rights group Fair Fight Action, said some polling locations ran out of provisional ballots, needed because so many machines were out of order, within the first hour of voting. And while Raffensperger, Georgia’s top election official, had warned voters on the eve of Tuesday’s primaries to expect long lines and days-long delays for results, and blamed Fulton for the mailed ballot problems, Bringman said the buck stops with Raffensperger.

“He had primary responsibility to make sure today’s elections went well, and he failed,” Bringman said. Bringman noted that the problems are not limited to Fulton but also extend into surrounding counties: Gwinnett, Cobb and Dekalb. And he said Raffensperger, not local officials, chose the vendor responsible for mailing ballots.

All five states holding primaries on Tuesday — Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, West Virginia and North Dakota — have adjusted voting procedures to make it easier for voters to cast ballots by mail. And in all five states, mail balloting is projected to reach record numbers, with 1.2 million already casting ballots in Georgia alone.

In North Dakota, all voting in Tuesday’s contests must be done via mail. In the other four states, a limited number of in-person voting locations will open Tuesday, which is one reason election officials anticipate long lines despite the heightened participation in mail balloting.

“It’s going to be a different election than we’ve ever seen,” Raffensperger said. “We are still in the grips, albeit a loosening one, of covid-19. Fewer people will be able to be in the room than we have seen, due to social distancing. Time for using each machine will be longer because of disinfecting protocol. The lines will be longer because we will be standing six feet apart.”

Raffensperger said in-person voting locations have been consolidated so dramatically that, in some places, precincts will serve up to 10,000 voters. And voters must also adjust to the use of paper ballots for the first time in two decades, meaning “there will be a learning curve for both election workers and voters.”

The secretary of state noted that he has launched an investigation into difficulties in Fulton County, home of Atlanta, where many voters requested ballots by mail with plenty of time to spare — some as far back as May — and still have not received them. He emphasized that those voters can vote in person if they still haven’t received their mail ballot by Tuesday.

Some counties in Georgia have announced plans to keep polling locations open until 8 p.m., and he said the state will not begin reporting results until all voting is complete. Georgia’s primary was originally scheduled for March 24 and has been delayed twice as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Although Joe Biden has already secured enough delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, a handful of Tuesday’s contests will set up competitive congressional races in November. In Georgia, both parties will choose nominees in the 7th Congressional District, in the blue-trending Atlanta suburbs, and the deep-red 9th and 14th districts, where Republican incumbents are retiring.

In Nevada, Republicans will nominate candidates to challenge Democratic incumbents in the swing 3rd and 4th districts. Republicans in South Carolina’s 1st District will pick their challenger to Rep. Joe Cunningham, a moderate Democrat who won the seat two years ago, and West Virginia Democrats will pick their nominee to face Gov. Jim Justice, who left the party in 2017 to become a Republican. Some Georgia and South Carolina races could head to runoffs later this summer.

Voters in Georgia and South Carolina have until poll closures on Tuesday to turn in their absentee ballots, but the volume could require days to complete the count. Voters in Nevada and South Carolina, where ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday, and North Dakota, where they must be postmarked by Monday, could wait even longer to see results.

“It’s a lot of work. We traditionally do a lot of in-person voting, not a lot of voting by mail,” said Wayne Thorley, Nevada’s deputy secretary of state for elections. In preparation, the state procured new equipment, launched a statewide voter education campaign and worked more closely with the Postal Service, he said.

Clark County, Nevada’s largest county and home of Las Vegas, mailed ballots to every registered voter, a decision that drew criticism after scattered reports of what appeared to be unattended or discarded ballots outside apartment mailboxes. Republican Party leaders who are opposing efforts to expand mail voting said the incidents showed the risk of ballot fraud.

Thorley said about 250,000 ballots were returned statewide as undeliverable, disputing that droves of ballots had been left unattended. The potential for fraud is low, he said, because the signature on a voter’s mail ballot must match the one the state has on file.

Still, the Republican National Committee is keeping a close eye on several states, including Nevada. Trump Victory, the fundraising committee that raises money for the Trump campaign and the RNC, has recruited Election Day volunteers, lawyers and observers in Nevada, the RNC said. The party’s on-the-ground teams and volunteers have called and texted voters in Nevada encouraging them to vote, making 1 million voter contacts, the RNC said.

Election results in Nevada are expected to start uploading online at 8:30 p.m. Pacific time.

In North Dakota, Gov. Doug Burgum (R) signed an executive order in March allowing counties to allow all eligible voters to vote by mail. Statewide election results are expected to be published online after 8 p.m. Central time.

So far, a record 196,100 vote-by-mail ballots have been sent, and nearly three-fourths of those have been returned to election officials, according to the North Dakota secretary of state. The number of ballots cast so far exceeds that in the 2016 primary.

A federal judge in North Dakota recently approved a process for officials to handle ballots with signatures that do not match those on file for the voter to ensure ballots are not rejected before voters are notified.

Voters in West Virginia can cast their ballots four different ways for Tuesday’s election: by mail, in person, early voting, and electronically for people with physical disabilities or who are overseas or with the military, state officials said.

Because of the pandemic, the state expanded the use of “illness excuse” for voters who choose to vote by mail out of fear of the coronavirus. The ballot must be postmarked by Election Day and received by the start of the canvass on June 15, state officials said.

In case there are poll workers who do not show up because they are sick or fear the coronavirus, county clerks have prepared an alternative list of poll workers on standby on Election Day, Secretary of State Andrew “Mac” Warner said. The state decreased the number of poll workers required for polling places to as few as three workers, he said.

State officials delayed the election, originally scheduled for May 12, because of the coronavirus. That extra time allowed them to secure personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, gloves and Q-Tips that voters can use to mark their ballots at polling places, he said.

The state is on track for a turnout similar to the 2016 primary, and about half of the anticipated ballots, approximately 250,000, have been cast through early voting or mail-in ballots, Warner said Monday. Results are expected online starting 7:30 p.m. Eastern time.

In South Carolina, Democrats sued to allow anyone to vote by mail in Tuesday’s primary as a result of the pandemic, but before the state Supreme Court could act, the legislature passed a law expanding mail balloting to all registered voters.