If there is a consistent worry attached to this election, it is the fear, fueled by President Donald Trump, that the mail-in election is somehow rigged.

“RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” blasted a Trump tweet last month without any proof.

Also without any proof, the GOP president retweeted Attorney General William Barr’s recent comment that expanding mail-in voting “absolutely opens the floodgates to fraud.”

Yes, this is tedious, but mail-in voting is important because the pandemic is forcing millions more to vote by mail in this crucial presidential election year. Hawaii has its own big stake in it because it is our first all-mail-in election.

Back I went to Hawaii’s election officials to essentially ask, “When you guys say you are sure, are you sure you are sure? And, why?”

Rex Quidilla, city elections administrator, handled the assurances by first addressing Trump’s charge that Chinese were somehow going to send out millions of fake ballots.

Quidilla explained that the Chinese can send out 10 million ballots, but Hawaii checks each ballot mailed back against a “transaction number” printed on each ballot. The number has been assigned to each voter and if the number doesn’t match, the ballot is not counted. China might be a smart country, but it doesn’t know the transaction numbers of Hawaii’s voter ballots.

Another question raised is how does the city and state know your signature on the ballot envelope belongs to you.

Quidilla explained that somewhere along the process of registering to vote, you signed your name. He said the state uses driver’s license signatures, state ID signatures or even the initial voter registration form. He said that you cannot have registered to vote without somewhere along the process putting down your signature — and the state kept a digitized copy of it. You may have registered to vote online, but that is linked to a verified signature.

The company handling this election, Phoenix-based Runbeck Election Services, founded in 1972, processes ballots for 24 million voters. It uses a computer program to perform what it calls “automated signature comparison” to scan your old signature and the new signature. It looks for loops formed the same way, letters with the same slant and spacing. If the signature is off, the computer kicks out the ballot, sending it to an actual human hired by the city. Two groups of election workers look on a terminal showing both signatures side by side.

“Among things they look for is spelling,” Quidilla said, explaining that sometimes voters in a family will mix up the ballot and the signature envelope. In other words, Mary Smith puts her ballot in husband Bob Smith’s envelope. The names don’t match, but the address does and, Quidilla said, the elections office has a way to get the right ballot with the right signature.

Finally, the state elections office has a link so you can check if your mailed-in ballot has been received. Go to the elections home page (elections.hawaii.gov/) and click on “Check the status of your ballot”; fill out the required information and you will know whether your ballot was received.

All you have to do is mail it in. Officials suggested sending back your ballot by Aug. 5. The primary election is Aug. 8.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.