“It seems incredible, but this is the daily realities in these counties,” Mr. Albright said. “These are the connections and the circles of influence that a lot of people who don’t live in these counties understand. They don’t understand the levels of intimidation.”

This fear — that state officials are intentionally attempting to undermine voting rights of minorities — echoes a darker period in America’s past when states codified voter disenfranchisement along racial lines. The Georgia scenes have also reignited debate about the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which eliminated the need for states with a history of voter disenfranchisement to obtain federal pre-clearance before changing its voting laws, as was previously required under a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“We’ve lost that pre-emptive mechanism, so now we’re left with case-by-case litigation to fight, and that can be slow,” said Kristen Clarke, the president of national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We’re in a moment that requires a tremendous amount of vigilance to be on top of the potential voter suppression efforts that are emanating around the country.”

This is especially true in Georgia, which has long been watched by voting rights advocates. One prominent group, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, reported recently that the state had removed 1.5 million voters from its rolls between 2012 and 2016, twice the number of the preceding four years, and that elections also had seen a rise in provisional ballots that are submitted by voters whose registrations are somehow missing or defective. The group said that data suggests, but does not prove, that the customary process of purging voters who have moved or died from the rolls is also removing legitimate voters.

Mr. Kemp was a key proponent of the 2017 state law that requires an “exact match” between a voter’s registration form and his or her government documents, meaning a missing hyphen, or a difference between a married and a maiden name, can cause a registration to be suspended.

Mr. Kemp resisted calls to resign from his post as secretary of state during his gubernatorial run. He has also repeatedly leveled the charge that Ms. Abrams wants noncitizens’ votes to count, based on a recent campaign speech where Ms. Abrams said “the blue wave” should be “comprised of those who are documented and undocumented.” Ms. Abrams has denied she meant that noncitizens should have their votes counted; she said she was referring to who Democrats are pledging to protect, if elected.