Early voting in Georgia’s twin run-off elections for the U.S. Senate begins next Monday.

But officials in one of the state’s largest counties have already signaled they’ll cut the number of early-voter polling places, an apparent attempt to suppress the vote.

Voter suppression aimed at African Americans and other minorities has a long history in Georgia, dating all the way back to the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. But the state’s demographics and traditional voting patterns are changing.

Cobb County in suburban Atlanta — whose population of 750,000 is more than 60% white — has been a key to the state’s gradual shift from Republican Red toward Democratic Blue, in large part because of enthusiastic participation by Black voters.

Hillary Clinton won the county in 2016, although she didn’t win the state; Black former state representative Stacey Abrams won it in a losing bid for governor in 2018.

And Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Cobb County this year, contributing to his 12,000-vote statewide victory, “the first  Democratic presidential candidate in 28 years to win Georgia,” says the progressive magazine Mother Jones.

Runoff elections set up in Georgia in early 1960s by segregationists to keep Black voters from participating

But high turnout, diverse electorate & 2 years of organizing against voter suppression could be the difference for Dem Senate candidates on Jan 5 https://t.co/zRBxWacTIG

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) December 7, 2020

Now the nation is focused on the run-offs. If Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock win both, their party will gain control of the Senate, which would be a huge boost for President-elect Biden.  

But voting rights advocates “are concerned that with an election this important, a lack of early voting options could limit the number of voters” likely to support the Democratic candidates, reports The Grio, a news website oriented toward Black Americans.

County election officials “recently announced they’d be limiting the early voting locations … from 11 during the presidential election to 5 for the run-off,” The Grio reports, citing the Washington Post.

I told y’all that Georgia would be up to it’s voter suppression tricks on @amjoy on this Sunday on @MSNBC. https://t.co/03r2hpFAw3

— LaTosha Brown (@MsLaToshaBrown) December 8, 2020

Last week, voting rights groups filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Georga secretary of state’s office of improperly removing almost 200,000 registered voters from the rolls.

“Latosha Brown, a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, said at a press conference … that the purge amounted to ‘massive-scale voter suppression,’” reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

And now in Cobb County, it’s the same song, new verse, with the number of early-voting locations reduced by more than half.