Donald Trump wants to make it harder for you to vote and easier for Republicans to cheat.

If you have paid attention to my past writing, you know I have been saying this for years. You also know that my warnings have been dismissed by many as too partisan and alarmist.

Now you know I have been right all along.

On Thursday night, Trump stood before the Republican faithful, demanded they raise their right hand, and pledge to vote whether they are "registered or not." He then told them to "cheat like hell."

The reaction in the hall was one of excitement and exuberance, not horror. The President of the United States demanded his followers' blind loyalty in committing election fraud. Yet, outside of those of us in the pro-democracy movement, few seemed to notice.

This has been a recurring problem.

It was only a couple of years ago that self-appointed experts suggested voter suppression wasn't even real. They tried to sell voters on the idea that it had no effect on elections.

They sanctimoniously claimed that, in fact, it was those of us fighting for voting rights who were the real problem. We were sounding false alarms and waging unnecessary fights in court.

A broken media culture led many of the largest legacy outlets to embrace this view. Pundits and media elites argued that both parties were to blame for the breakdown of politics. In their TV roundtables and news articles, they condemned the arsonist for lighting fires and the firefighter for wasting water.

For a period, even some Democrats agreed with them. They placed norms and good faith above all else. They decried people like me for being too litigious and outspoken. They told voters that, if voter suppression existed, Democrats would simply "out-organize" it.

In the last few months, everything has changed. The voices claiming voter suppression is a myth have gone silent. Many former critics now position themselves as allies in the fight for democracy.

Yet even as Trump tells his supporters to "cheat like hell," much of the public narrative about Trump's plan to subvert the election remains muted. Too few are willing to say out loud what he himself has declared — that his plan is to cheat and attempt to steal an election.

I understand their reticence. Claiming that the president of the United States will deploy the federal government to steal an election is too big to fathom.

But to overcome this, we need everyone to focus on this challenge and play their part...