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Imagine an NFL referee walking onto the field with two minutes left in the game to announce that the end zone has moved 10 yards downfield, effective immediately. Both teams would object, correctly, that changing the boundaries of the game this close to the final whistle makes a fair outcome impossible. For almost two decades, the Supreme Court has applied that same basic logic to elections, telling lower courts to leave voting rules alone once a race is close enough that altering them would confuse voters and overwhelm election administrators. This week, the Trump administration asked the court to do exactly what that rule exists to prevent, just from the other side of the field.

On Monday, the administration requested that the justices let it fully implement an executive order that would remake how mail ballots work nationwide, about 100 days before the midterms. The order directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of every citizen over 18 years old in each state, and it instructs the Postal Service to refuse mail ballots from any voter whose name is not on those rolls. A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the plan for the 23 states, as well as the District of Columbia, that sued over it, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit........

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