BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Mayor Joseph P. Ganim was standing outside his office on a recent afternoon at the start of a prearranged interview, posing for a portrait photo.

Until suddenly he wasn’t.

“I’m done with this!” the mayor declared, cutting short an explanation of why he believed his challenger’s accusations of voter fraud in the recent Democratic primary — allegations that are being investigated by the state — were false.

The mayor jumped into a car and sped away.

Nine minutes later, he called. Let’s meet on the city’s East Side, he said, where he was campaigning shop to shop.

The change of venue made sense: Mr. Ganim is perhaps most at home among the city’s voters. He was Bridgeport’s mayor from 1991 to 2003 and was voted back in 2015, his tenure inconveniently interrupted by the seven years he spent in federal prison on corruption charges.

The world of politics is filled with messy local races, acrimonious small-town battles, contested elections and quixotic campaigns.

And then there’s Bridgeport and its mayor, Joe Ganim.

The latest turmoil to hit Connecticut’s largest city, about 60 miles northeast of Manhattan, centers on Mr. Ganim’s narrow victory in the Democratic primary last month.

State Senator Marilyn Moore defeated Mr. Ganim at the polls by four percentage points, or roughly 350 votes. But Mr. Ganim trounced Ms. Moore in absentee balloting by more than 600 votes: The final count gave the mayor 5,304 votes to Ms. Moore’s 5,034.

An investigation by Hearst Connecticut Media then detailed how some residents at the P.T. Barnum public housing complex and Harborview Towers, a low-income apartment building, said ballot takers pushed them to vote for Mr. Ganim. Some claimed that absentee-ballot providers filled out forms for them, or gave them absentee ballots when they did not qualify for them, both of which are illegal under state law.

In late September, the State Elections Enforcement Commission began an investigation into the matter, on the referral of Denise Merrill, the secretary of state.

The commission has issued subpoenas for elections records related to absentee ballots, as well as surveillance videos and visitor logs from P.T. Barnum and Harborview Towers.

“There is a reason that we have absentee ballots, and that has been abused over and over again,” Senator Moore said in an interview. “This is not about Marilyn Moore. This is about an opportunity to break down a system that has kept people disenfranchised for a very long time.”

The matter has also been taken up in Bridgeport Superior Court, as a judge is hearing testimony on a lawsuit claiming a number of instances of voter fraud. The lawsuit, brought by two grass-roots groups, Bridgeport Generation Now Votes and PT Partners, seeks to invalidate the primary results and schedule a new primary.

The two groups said they found “patterns of behavior that show repeated violations of the laws regarding the absentee ballot process.”

One of those accused was Beverly Cox, a retired nursing assistant who lives in Harborview Towers and has for many years distributed absentee ballots to her neighbors.

The lawsuit accused her of helping at least two residents fill in applications for absentee ballots, and then instructing them to vote for particular candidates.

Ms. Cox, known as Miss Beverly at Harborview, said that supplying absentee ballots was a thankless, laborious task — shuttling applications and then ballots to and from City Hall for her neighbors, many of whom are physically disabled.

“These people in wheelchairs, they can’t get out to voice their opinions,” said Ms. Cox, who added that she feared that the scrutiny over absentee ballots would discourage many from filing them. “They’re confusing my people here in the building, and come election time they won’t know how to vote because of this mess.”

On Washington Avenue, two neighbors with physical disabilities joined Ms. Cox, who held a wooden paddle with an inscription that suggested its use for corporal punishment.

“It makes me angry because are we not allowed to go and vote like we are supposed to go and vote?” said one of the neighbors, Anthony Brown, as he navigated his motorized wheelchair over a curb. “Why are only the handicapped and the disabled targeted for this? They are taking your rights away from you.”

Mayor Ganim downplayed the lawsuit and the investigation by the state elections commission, and highlighted the importance of getting absentee ballots to those who need them.

“In this city, you have an inordinate amount of seniors and people who have a challenge in getting to the polls,” he said. “They have a legal right, if they meet the criteria, to vote. Machine votes aren’t weighted more than an absentee vote. A vote is a vote.”

On the day the lawsuit was filed, Mr. Ganim’s camp questioned some of Senator Moore’s election tactics, distributing to reporters photocopies of the senator’s ballot petition, with errors — like a couple in which the wife appeared to have signed for both herself and her partner, which is not allowed — highlighted in orange.

Ms. Moore, who is still hopeful that a new primary will be ordered, has also begun a write-in campaign for the general election.

“When I talk about people with second chances, I expect people to do better than they did before, right, at least to prove yourself,” she said. “And I’ve just seen so many things happen during his term that I doubt that he’s any different than the person than he was the first time. He showed his true colors, and he went and did it again this time.”

The senator was referring to Mr. Ganim’s prison sentence for 16 counts of criminal misconduct, including extortion, tax evasion, racketeering and bribery. That case accused him of lavishing city contracts on his friends in exchange for things like wine and home improvements.

Much of that seemed a distant memory as the mayor walked from restaurant to barbershop to vape shop on East Main Street, until he met a couple outside a Puerto Rican restaurant.

They happened to be suing the City of Bridgeport for what they say was brutality by members of the city’s Police Department, and began admonishing the mayor. Mr. Ganim took off.

Attempts to follow him were rebuffed. “You’re going to write something bad about the mayor!” a member of the mayor’s entourage screamed, blocking access to Mr. Ganim.

The mayor shrugged and again left. After another invitation to rejoin him was politely declined, the mayor’s spokeswoman, Rowena White, called to follow up.

“The mayor wanted me to call,” she said. “He thought today could have gone better.”

Sarah Maslin Nir covers breaking news for the Metro section. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her series “Unvarnished,” an investigation into New York City’s nail salon industry that documented the exploitative labor practices and health issues manicurists face. @SarahMaslinNir

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