ElectronJS crashes on dialog.showOpenDialog(...) - node.js

Question

I'm trying to prompt an "open file" dialog box, and I found dialog.showOpenDialog(...) in the electron docs.
I've added this line to a few different projects now, with the result of crashing as soon as that line hits. I would see the file explorer dialog window open for a second, then it crashed. The console gives me no error message, the last thing it prints is Promise { <pending> }.
What I've tried:
Adding dialog.showOpenDialog(...) to the official vscode debugging example, to see if it picks up any errors. It always crashes as soon as it reaches that line, with no error message.
Removing my node_modules folder and reinstalling electron using npm install electron --save-dev
Running the app using a global electron command electron .
Uninstalling global electron using npm uninstall -g electron and using a local npm start
Checking if my node packages are out of date using `npm outdate
Running the app using --disable-gpu argument
I'm using Ubuntu 19.04, not a VM, but I also tested it on Ubuntu 18.04 in a VM.
One interesting note is that when I tried to use an html form button with a type = file to accomplish this same task, it also crashed as soon as the file explorer dialog box opened in the electron app. BUT it did work when I opened the html page in a regular web browser.
Here's my main.js
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron')
// Keep a global reference of the window object, if you don't, the window will
// be closed automatically when the JavaScript object is garbage collected.
let win
// This method will be called when Electron has finished
// initialization and is ready to create browser windows.
// Some APIs can only be used after this event occurs.
function createWindow() {
// Create the browser window.
win = new BrowserWindow({
width: 800,
height: 600,
webPreferences: {
nodeIntegration: true
}
})
// and load the index.html of the app.
win.loadFile('index.html')
// Open the DevTools.
win.webContents.openDevTools()
// Emitted when the window is closed.
win.on('closed', () => {
// Dereference the window object, usually you would store windows
// in an array if your app supports multi windows, this is the time
// when you should delete the corresponding element.
win = null
})
const { dialog } = require('electron')
console.log(dialog.showOpenDialog({ properties: ['openFile', 'multiSelections'] })) //*****THIS LINE HERE
}
app.on('ready', createWindow)
// Quit when all windows are closed.
app.on('window-all-closed', () => {
// On macOS it is common for applications and their menu bar
// to stay active until the user quits explicitly with Cmd + Q
if (process.platform !== 'darwin') {
app.quit()
}
})
app.on('activate', () => {
// On macOS it's common to re-create a window in the app when the
// dock icon is clicked and there are no other windows open.
if (win === null) {
createWindow()
}
})
// In this file you can include the rest of your app's specific main process
// code. You can also put them in separate files and require them here.
Here's my package.json
{
"name": "electron-demo",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "",
"main": "main.js",
"scripts": {
"start": "electron .",
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
},
"author": "",
"license": "ISC",
"devDependencies": {
"electron": "^7.1.2"
}
}