At the beginning of the early voting period, some voters in Cobb County, Georgia, waited more than six hours to cast a ballot. Elsewhere in Atlanta, the delay was over ten hours. In New York City, it took four hours for some voters to get into the polling booth.

Apart from a ballot drop box, the defining image of the past few weeks has been Americans lining up to vote — the lines often snaking endlessly into the distance, made more pronounced by social distancing requirements. According to the United States Elections Project, some 100 million votes were cast before Election Day. Some states even surpassed their overall 2016 turnout during the early voting period.

This massive display of voter turnout, particularly amid suppression efforts, is remarkable. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that long lines are neither inevitable nor a sign of a fully functional democracy. Even in a pandemic — or, perhaps, especially in a pandemic — no voter should be forced to wait more than an hour to cast a ballot or worry that their mailed ballot will not be delivered on time.