Washington: The torching of a black church in Mississippi, daubed in pro-Trump slogans; neo-Nazi threats to distribute liquor and marijuana to discourage Philadelphia's blacks from voting; and serial promises of white supremacist voter intimidation efforts are shaping next Tuesday more as civil war than as an exercise in universal suffrage.
"Vote Trump" was spray-painted on the ruins of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, 160 kilometres north-west of Jackson, overnight on Tuesday. Local fire chief Ruben Brown said the church was badly damaged but no injuries have been reported.
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US militia prepares for post-election trouble
Rifle practice and hand-to-hand combat training for a militia group in Jackson, Georgia, in anticipation of possible unrest in the wake of the US election.
Coinciding with the Ku Klux Klan's endorsement of Donald Trump in a campaign that has become overtly racist, the attack kindles fears of a return to the 1960s civil rights unrest, when southern black churches were often torched or bombed by white supremacists.
"The act that happened left our hearts broken," Pastor Carolyn Hudson said at the ruins of the church, which has served the community of about 33,000 for 111 years.
The credibility of some of the threatened Election Day disruption is questioned. But as polls tighten, both major parties are beating a path to the courts - in the case of the Democrats, seeking orders for the organisers to back off; and in the case of Trump supporters, to affirm their "right" to monitor voting.
In the Real Clear Politics (RCP) average of national polls, Hillary Clinton's lead over Trump has all but evaporated - on Wednesday it was a mere 1.7 points. But The Huffington Post Pollster's average had her comfortably ahead, by 6.2 points.
In 2012, both poll monitors pointed to victory by Barack Obama, but by margins significantly less than his final four-point result in the election. RCP's end-of-campaign average put Obama just 0.7 points ahead; HuffPost was more generous at 1.5 points.
Voters are now being subjected to a blizzard of polls - by lunchtime Wednesday, more than a dozen had been published for various swing states. Blended into running averages by RCP, they showed each candidate leading in seven swing states apiece - Trump by margins of 0.7 points to 5.7 points; Clinton by margins of 2.4 points to 6.6 points.
Trump has repeatedly urged his followers to monitor polls, claiming that rampant electoral fraud, which is virtually non-existent in the US, could rob him of victory.
His associates and others on the far right have responded that they will have thousands of monitors at predominantly black precincts - and, because this is America, many can be expected to be armed.
Some claim to be freelancing, others that they are liaising with the Trump campaign.
Funnily, with millions of early votes already cast, there has been just a single report of attempted voter fraud - by a Trump supporter in Iowa, who was arrested after she attempted to vote a second time.
If on the morning of Election Day it turns out that we have white supremacists standing around looking threatening at polling places, I think it would arouse anger.
Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Centre
"The possibility of violence is very real," Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors race and hate groups, told reporters.
"Donald Trump has been telling his supporters for weeks and weeks and weeks now that they are about to have the election stolen from them by evil forces on behalf of the elites."
Describing some who are making the threats as "serial exaggerators", Potok warned that if the activist turnout eventuated it might backfire - because of the absence of fraud.
"If on the morning of Election Day it turns out that we have white supremacists standing around looking threatening at polling places, I think it would arouse anger," he said.
"People would vote just to prove they're not being intimidated by these radical racists."
Andrew Anglin, a leader in the neo-Nazi movement, spoke of distributing liquor and marijuana in what he called the Philadelphia "ghetto", and a group that hosts a website called The Right Stuff claims to be setting up a network of hidden cameras to record people making more than a single visit to a polling place.
Anglin, who edits the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, claimed he would be sending "an army of Alt-Right nationalists" to watch the polls.
The Oath Keepers, made up of thousands of former police, military and security types who often go heavily armed in public, is reportedly urging members to conduct "undercover intelligence-gathering".
Attempting to justify their activity, an unnamed representative of The Right Stuff rather stupidly told Politico magazine how secret cameras would be installed.
He said in an email: "Many polling locations are in schools, and black schools are so disorderly that pretty much any official-looking white person with a clipboard can gain access to them ahead of time and set up a hidden camera. You don't really ever even have to speak with an adult. Simply walk in like you belong there and no one even asks you why you are there.
"So we usually go in teams of two, one person driving and one person dressed as a blue-collar worker with a clipboard, and we set up a hidden camera in the school cafeteria. Go during lunchtime and the teachers are all so busy trying to contain the kids that no one says anything. We already have a few set up."
Trump adviser Roger Stone has set up Stop the Steal and claims he has a force of "monitors" who will watch at 7000 precincts, almost a third of them in Philadelphia, where he claims Democratic control of the city will allow electoral officials to rig the result.
William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom party, which advocates deporting non-whites from the United States, said his members were responding to the Trump campaign's call for volunteer monitors.
Court actions to date suggest smaller operations than the boasts by Trump's various supporters - a Democratic action in Arizona mentions 93 people who had signed up with Stone's Stop the Steal; and in Ohio, there's mention of Stone having "dozens" of volunteers.
The actions allege that Republican operatives are urging volunteers to follow voters "into parking lots, interrogate them, record their licence plates, and even call 911 to report that a felony is in progress"; instructing them to demand identifying information.
In Ohio, Pat McDonald, the Republican director of Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, has reportedly complained that "Trump supporters have already visited the county elections board, identifying themselves as poll observers, even though they did not appear to be credentialled as poll observers as required under Ohio law".
In Pennsylvania, where poll watching is legal and where literally every voter in 59 districts voted for Barack Obama in 2012, eight Trump voters in Philadelphia are in court, challenging state Election Code provisions that prevent them from watching the vote beyond the county in which they live - with an argument that their right to political speech was being restricted.
In October, in North Carolina's Orange County, the Republican Party's Hillsborough office was set on fire and a graffiti message left nearby said "leave town or else".
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