Can't write image data to path

Hi, I'm trying to store images to the public folder, but it's telling me that I can't write image data to path. Please help! Here is my code:

if (request()->hasFile('image')) {
                     $image = request()->file('image');
                     $filename = time() . '.' . $image;
                     $path = public_path('images/' . $filename);

                     // if (!file_exists($path)) {
                     //        mkdir($path, 666, true);
                     // }

                     Image::make($image)->resize(128, 128)->encode('jpg', 75)->save($path);

                     Election::create([
                            'image' => $filename
                     ]);
              }
                        

I have tried to do chmod -R 777 public/images/ but that doesn't work