Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is on the ballot in Minnesota, now that GOP supporters have filed the necessary paperwork with the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office in the nick of time.

Good. Americans generally like having at least a Democrat and Republican on their ballots, even in Minnesota, a state famous (and infamous) for its support of third-party candidates.

But a bigger issue in the news this week is election security. Trump has spoken fears of the election being “rigged.” This summer, Americans were shocked to learn about the Russian hack of Democratic Party computers. It’s a foreign power invading our civic process.

This is why it concerns us when states shift from paper ballots. Presently, Minnesota — wisely — uses paper ballots in polling places. It learned from the bitter fight between incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken in 2008 and its subsequent recount that when everything comes down to the nitty-gritty, it’s good to have paper to fall back on.

You can’t hack paper.

Even Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon — the man in charge of elections in Minnesota — advocates for having paper ballots to fall back on. He says it would be a miscalculation if state leaders were to move the state to digital ballots.

Like Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Montana, New Mexico, Alabama, Oklahoma, Michigan, Maryland, New York and the New England states all reply solely on paper ballots tallied with electronic devices.

Washington, Oregon and Colorado have gone to voting with postal mail.

Louisiana, Georgia, Delaware, New Jersey and South Carolina all rely on digital ballots without paper trails at all. They use what are called direct recording electronic (DRE) systems. Voters touch a screen, push a button or move a dial, and their vote is recorded.

Yikes. That seems dangerous in the case of a hack, a problematic disc drive or a closely contested race.

Nevada uses all DRE throughout the state, but with the paper trail, thanks to printers.

In many states, it depends on the county. It’s either paper ballots or DRE systems that leave a paper trail. These are Alaska, Hawaii, California, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina.

Other states have either have paper ballots or DRE systems that don’t leave a paper trail. These are Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Americans already struggle to have confidence in the election system as politicians and pundits try to gain an edge by discouraging voting. It might be high time to consider a national standard for voting machines.

Frankly, we favor the way Minnesota does it. Voters fill in circles on paper ballots, which then are scanned by vote-counting machines. That should be the way it’s done across the land.