‘Is it going to be safe?’: suspicions and fear dominate a crucial swing county in lead-up to US election

Vanessa Guerra is resigned to questions from Donald Trump's supporters about the many ways in which American voters imagine next month's presidential election might be rigged against him.

But more recently the Saginaw county clerk, who is overseeing the ballot in a highly contested patch of central Michigan, has faced a new line of questioning at meetings called to reassure distrustful voters.

"I did a presentation last week and, as usual, we had a lot of questions about the validity of election results. But now they're also asking: Is it going to be safe to go to the polls on election day? Is something going to happen? That's something new," said Guerra.

The most consequential US presidential election of recent times is also likely to be the most disputed, particularly if the results are as close as opinion polls suggest.

Republican officials are gearing up to stall and overturn the count if it goes against Trump. Meanwhile, the former US president has warned of a bloodbath if he loses again next month, which voters have reason to take seriously in the wake of the January 6 storming of the US Capitol after he lost the last election.

Trump's continued insistence that the 2020 vote was rigged against him - including at a rally in Saginaw earlier this month - and that Democrats are plotting to steal next month's election, has left its mark.

In Michigan, a key swing state that Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016 and then lost to Joe Biden four years later, one in five people say they do not have confidence that votes will be counted accurately.