Does America need a new “test oath” for our officials and members of Congress? That question begs to be asked as talk spreads among Democrats that the Supreme Court — and even Donald Trump’s presidency — are “illegitimate.” The Left is being driven crazy by the fact that Mr. Trump emerged as president despite having lost the popular vote. The press is fizzing with talk of a new civil war.

Leading Democrats are growing particularly vocal about the equal representation in the Senate of the 50 states, large or small. That affects not just the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh but also what Hillary Clinton has called the “now godforsaken Electoral College.” That’s because the number of its electors equals the combined total of each state’s representatives and senators plus three for the District of Columbia.

Lately the theme has been taken up not only by Mrs. Clinton but by such future Democratic contenders as Senator Elizabeth Warren, who reckons we lack for a “healthy democracy.” The gripe is being encouraged by our leading organs in the press — with some, such as the Week, the New Yorker, and Foreign Policy magazines, wondering whether America is on the brink of a new civil war.

Which brings us to the question of the oath. All federal and state legislators, officers, and judges must be bound by oath to support the Constitution. The First Senate enacted for its members a 14 word oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States.” During the Civil War, though, the oath began to strike some as inadequate.

President Lincoln started it in 1861, when he began requiring civilian federal employees to take an expanded oath. That was during what a history issued online by the Senate calls “a time of uncertain and shifting loyalties.” The legislators “believed the Union had as much to fear from northern traitors as southern soldiers” and soon added to the oath a section dubbed the “Ironclad Test Oath.”

It required all elected or appointed officials to swear not only that they support the Constitution but they’d never been disloyal in the past. Lincoln came to oppose the Ironclad Test Oath, but the Senate eventually required the Test Oath to be sworn orally and in writing. The Ironclad Oath was not repealed until 1884. The modern oath is still not only spoken but signed. A video exists of Hillary Clinton signing the oath book.

Does she still believe it, now that she’s thrown in with the “resistance”? Do other leading Democrats? Should the oath be expanded to an new ironclad test oath? The idea would be to underline support for the electoral college and the equal representation of the states in the Senate. Here is how the current oath might be made “ironclad,” with new language in bold:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, including the equal representation of the states in the Senate and the apportionment to each state such electors for president and vice president as are equal to the total number of their senators and representatives in Congress; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

It’s not our intention to suggest that anyone be barred from plumping for any amendment to the Constitution. That’s as American as apple pie. Nor would we suggest that a new test oath is needed only for Democrats. To talk, though, about “resistance,” to suggest that the president and the Supreme Court are illegitimate, well, such parole invites questions. Hence the logic of a new test oath to sort out who really supports the Constitution as we have it.