In 2018, Georgia's Stacey Abrams made history by running for governor.
The Democrat was the first black woman nominated by a major party in a gubernatorial race in any US state.
She lost, but only narrowly. And her defeat catapulted her to national stardom.
Now, four years later, Ms Abrams wants to make history by winning.
She's again running for governor against incumbent Republican Brian Kemp, to whom she famously refused to concede, attributing his win — by less than 1.4 percentage points — to his efforts to suppress voter turnout.
Mr Kemp, who was previously Georgia's secretary of state, has denied the allegations.
"We are already on the path to history," Ms Abrams told a crowd of supporters at a recent campaign event.
"And it's not just about me being the first black woman in American history to become a governor in the United States of America after 246 years.
"This is about what we tell our children about who we are."
Since 2018, Ms Abrams has been hailed as a master strategist, whose years of work registering and turning out Democratic voters helped shift Georgia from red to purple to blue.
She has widely been credited with laying the foundation for President Joe Biden's key victory in the state in the 2020 presidential election.
But recent polls have consistently shown her trailing her rival by around five percentage points.
And a new election law, passed by state Republicans in 2021, could put her strategy — of courting voters at the margins rather than in the centre — to the test.
One million Georgians have already voted
Georgia voters are already turning out in record numbers to have their say in the US midterm elections amid soaring inflation, the reversal of reproductive rights, and ongoing threats to democracy.
Stacey Abrams is not the only high-profile Democrat on the state's ballot.
Senator Raphael Warnock is also trying to fend off a challenge from Herschel Walker, a Trumpian former football star.
Mr Walker, who has run on a staunchly conservative platform, was recently accused of paying for an ex-girlfriend's abortions after calling for a total ban on the medical procedure, as well as wielding a fake police badge in a recent debate.
That race, which could determine the balance of power in the US Senate, is currently pegged as a "toss up" by the Cook Political Report.
In Fulton County, which leans heavily Democratic, locals are acutely aware of the stakes.
At Ponce De Leon library in a leafy suburb of Atlanta, the state's capital, a long queue snaked around the car park during the first day of early voting.
Pam Hartley came straight from chemotherapy treatment to vote with her wife.
"I wanted to make sure I did it while I still felt good," she said.
"It's such a right that we have as American citizens to vote that it's important for me to do it when I can."
While the economy continues to top national lists of voters' concerns, Ms Hartley, who identified as a Democrat, said she was more motivated by attacks on civil rights.
"Inflation is temporary. I mean, nobody likes the economy, but it's temporary. If somebody takes our rights away, that's not temporary."
Other voters in line cited reproductive rights, voting access, criminal justice reform, student debt and legalising marijuana among their leading priorities.
Hasnaa Evans, who was waiting with her two-month-old daughter, recalled being pregnant when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in June.
The landmark ruling enshrined the right to abortion up to 24 weeks for nearly 50 years.
In Georgia, its downfall triggered a six-week abortion ban, which was signed into law by Mr Kemp in 2019.
"When I found out that I was pregnant, I was already six weeks, so I would not be eligible to terminate it if that's something that I wanted to do," Ms Evans said.
"I think the ability for a woman to choose is important.
"I chose to have her, but I know if the circumstances were different, I may have made another choice and I would have had to spend money to leave the state and all kinds of hoopla."
Restoring abortion access was also the top priority for father Matthew Silvia.
"Tomorrow, I'm getting a vasectomy, so I wanted to vote first," he said.
"I'm definitely voting to try and get enough people in to make abortion into a right that we can have in law."
Mr Silvia said he thought Democrats were energised after Georgia flipped blue in 2020 — the first time since Bill Clinton won the state in 1992.
"Normally there'd be a bit of apathy like, 'Oh, this is a red state. What can we do about it?' Now I think there are a lot more people who are engaged."
Since early voting began, on Monday, October 17, voters across the state have shattered turnout records for midterms by 50 per cent or more most days.
More than 758,000 people had already cast their ballots in person by Sunday evening, with few reports of long lines, according to the secretary of state's office.
The total turnout was nearly 838,000 for week one and has now surpassed 1 million.
And it's not just Democrats who are showing up.
Why Georgia is so closely watched
Georgia is widely considered a swing state, though its politics are heavily shaped by race and geography.
People of colour and young people, particularly in urban and suburban areas, are more likely to back Democratic candidates.
White voters in rural areas tend to lean Republican.
Elections are often close and have gotten closer as the population has grown and become more diverse.
More than 1.6 million people registered to vote in the past four years, many of whom are under 35 and live in cities, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
There has also been a substantial increase of Hispanic and Asian voters.
"I think that makes it a very interesting state because the people that are in the big city here in Atlanta have a lot different focuses and concerns than the people in the rural part of Georgia," said Allen English, the president of Atlanta Young Republicans.
"[People of] different races have different things that are important to them.
"And I think that since we're so diverse on so many levels, that's what has made us a purple state, if you will."
Mr English said the top concerns among his members were the economy, with inflation at a 40-year high, followed by violent crime.
Six months ago, he said, it was the other way around.
Mr English identified as anti-abortion but acknowledged the issue could be "polarising" for both parties.
"I think [Georgia] is a 50-50 state. And I think we're probably a pretty 50-50 country," he said.
"[Many] other states are very hard Republican or very hard Democrat. And you can't really get a good vibe as to what's going on there because you already know how the races are going to turn out.
"Here, it's anybody's game to win."
Abrams continues to call out voter suppression
Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial race was decided by fewer than 55,000 votes, while former president Donald Trump lost there in 2020 by only around 12,000.
That narrow margin led him to turn on the state's top elections official, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensburger, who refused to "find" votes to overturn the result.
Critics have sought to liken Stacey Abrams's refusal to concede in 2018 to Mr Trump's ongoing election denialism and false claims of voter fraud.
She has roundly rejected the comparison, arguing she always acknowledged her loss, despite being scathing of the obstacles faced by voters under a system once overseen by Mr Kemp — from long lines to voter roll purges to having ballots rejected for arbitrary reasons.
"As governor, I intend to stand up for the right to vote," she said during the first of two gubernatorial debates to be held ahead of election day on November 8.
"I will always acknowledge the outcome of elections, but I will never deny access to every voter because that is the responsibility of every American: to defend the right to vote."
Mr Kemp rebutted that Ms Abrams was "attacking" his record because "she doesn't want to talk about her own record".
But in 2021, soon after Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof won two crucial run-off elections in Georgia and secured their party's razor-thin majority in the Senate, the Republican-controlled state legislature overhauled its election system.
Georgia Republicans passed a sweeping law, dubbed the "Election Integrity Act", restricting voting access by adding rigid ID requirements for absentee voting, limiting drop boxes and banning handing out food and drinks to voters waiting in line.
The 98-page law, SB 202, also imposed new oversight of county election boards, including in Fulton County, which is majority black, Asian and Hispanic and home to about 11 per cent of the state's electorate.
Republicans argued the changes were necessary to restore confidence in elections, appointing a partisan panel to conduct a performance review of the county's elections.
Democrats and voting rights groups pushed back, arguing the law was intended to disenfranchise black voters, with President Joe Biden labelling it "Jim Crow 2.0".
"In signing SB 202, Governor Kemp took decisive action to remedy the long lines voters have experienced in years' past," said Tate Mitchell, press secretary for Kemp for Governor, in a statement.
Avery Davis-Roberts, the associate director of the democracy program at the Carter Center, said it was too early to know what the impact of the law will be.
The Fulton County-based nonprofit usually observes foreign elections but has recently turned its focus inwards to the US in response to "hyperpolarisation between our parties and within the electorate", according to Ms Davis-Roberts.
Its nonpartisan observers will monitor voting across the county for the first time in 2022, at the invitation of the performance review board.
Ms Davis-Roberts said the centre was particularly concerned by the harassment of election officials and "digital threats to democracy" such as disinformation and conspiracy theories about election fraud spread via social media.
"The way that people feel about elections generally can really be impacted by what they see in other parts of the country," she said.
"And that can sort of serve to erode trust in the process overall."
"All of us in Georgia are very aware that the way our elections are viewed really can have an impact on general levels of trust in other parts of the country in the same way that elections in other parts of the country can impact how we feel about our elections."
Two Georgias go head-to-head but Abrams faces an uphill climb
Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp have each spent four years preparing for this rematch.
During their first televised debate, which also involved a third-party libertarian candidate, they pitted parallel visions for the Peach State against one another, laying out starkly different policy agendas.
Ms Abrams called for targeted gun-safety measures, increased education funding, and policies to close the revenue gap between minority- and majority-owned businesses.
Mr Kemp sought to align his opponent with the economic policies of national Democrats, reminding viewers she was floated as a potential running mate for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
He denied having plans to ban contraception or the destruction of embryos and pointed to record voter turnout to dismiss accusations of voter suppression.
The following evening, Ms Abrams addressed her supporters directly at a campaign event in east Atlanta.
"Yesterday was amazing. And I'm not talking about the debate," she said.
"Yesterday we saw record turnout for early voting. Let's remember what that means: it does not mean that voter suppression doesn't exist. That's like saying that there are no more sharks in the water because more people get in.
"We know that voter suppression is alive and well in Georgia. But we're stronger. We're faster. And we're better than it and we are going to bring it and we're going to win this election."
Her supporters appeared unphased by recent polling.
"I don't feel represented by my government and Stacey represents me," said Sheridan Thomason, who attended the event with her mother and two daughters.
"And seeing her in office will be a brighter day for my children and for me for pretty much everything that I care about."
Republicans have tried to paint Ms Abrams as out-of-touch with everyday Georgians, labelling her "celebrity Stacey", due to her meteoric rise to fame backed by the likes of Oprah and former president Barack Obama.
As if to underscore the point, Mr Kemp held his own campaign event at an agriculture event in Moultrie, in south-west Georgia, with the Farmers for Kent coalition on the same day.
James "Woody" Woodall, the former president of Georgia NAACP, cautioned against overly simplistic interpretations of Georgia's shifting demographics and urban-rural divide.
"All black people are not Democrats and all black people aren't Republicans. In fact, the majority of Georgians aren't Democrat or Republican," he said.
"What we have to do is actually go into communities, build relationships with people and see what they're talking about.
"And they're talking about the economy. They're talking about a rise in gas prices, the rise in groceries, the rise in utilities, like gas and electricity and water.
"They're not talking about Stacey this or Kemp that. They're saying, 'What can I do to provide for my family?' And that's what the candidates and, ultimately, the media should be talking about as well."
Mr Woodall supports Ms Abrams but was among civil rights leaders who boycotted President Biden's voting rights speech in Atlanta earlier this year.
He said he wants national Democrats to do more to protect voting access in Georgia, regardless of the election outcome.
"My hope is that people go out and vote. And that their voices are heard and amplified throughout this state, not for political parties to take victory one way or the other.
"But for the people of Georgia to be able to have a safe and unadulterated say in what the future of this state should be as a whole."
