With less than 50 days before the midterms, every one of America’s 39,000 full-time journalists should be using their voice and platform to report on the possibility that this year’s elections could be stolen, subverted, or canceled by President Donald Trump and his allies. It’s a mistake to treat November 3 as a normal contest between Republicans and Democrats when powerful forces are pursuing a much darker outcome. And nobody should rule out the use of extraordinary measures after the violent January 6 attack on the Capitol, which was intended to halt the certification of an election Trump lost.

Trump has been claiming now for years that “elections are unfair and has been working to undermine our election system,” Michael Waldman, president of the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, recently told me. “We should never lose track of how extraordinary that is, to have the federal government and the president of the United States trying to undermine confidence in elections. The more noise, the more confusion, the more people think maybe I can’t vote because of this or that, the easier it might be, not just to keep people from voting, but to cast doubt on the results.”

Earlier this month, the New York Times editorial board captured this ominous moment in a blunt and welcome piece: “Trump Is Sabotaging the Midterms. The Supreme Court Must Stop Him.” It sounded the alarm over Trump’s executive order, issued in March, that would have required all states to submit their voter-registration rolls to the U.S. Postal Service, which would then attach a barcode to each voter’s information and make decisions about whether they were eligible........

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