Ask anyone: this election season has been crazy.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump; Democratic upstart Sen. Bernie Sanders; Russian hackers taking down the head of the Democratic National Committee on the eve of the party’s National Convention.

And now, amid reports that hackers breached voter records in Arizona and Illinois, federal officials publicly concerned about the security of states’ election systems two months before a presidential election.

Those concerns prompted Pedro Cortes, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, to earlier this week accept federal help assessing the threat here. Cortes is right in doing so, for several reasons — not the least of which amounts to being better safe than sorry in the biggest swing state in the country that uses touch screen voting machines, and consequently produces no paper ballot trail.

Other than the cost — more on that in a minute — the lack of a ballot trail is generally not a problem until the results of an election are questioned. Unfortunately that’s already happened this year. On Aug. 12 at a rally in Altoona and trailing badly in the polls, Trump said this: “The only way we can lose, in my opinion — and I really mean this, Pennsylvania — is if cheating goes on.”

Trump’s statement remains an unsupported and irresponsible claim. There is almost no actual in-person voter fraud. In a survey of 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014 nationwide, 241 possible — possible — fraudulent ballots were found.

But again, this is about voter confidence and satisfaction. The absence of physical, paper ballots backing up the results reported by Pennsylvania election officials matters to people.

Those same touch screen voting machines, used in the majority of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties — including Butler County — are now getting special attention not just from federal officials concerned about the security of the election, but state officials concerned about its cost.

On Wednesday the Eagle reported that Shari Brewer, director of the Butler County Elections Bureau, had been appointed to a statewide committee studying the matter. Brewer said the cost of elections is steep.

Butler County maintains 506 touch screen voting machines that cost roughly $5,000 a pop — plus $70,000 per year in maintenance and software costs. The machines, which generally have a life span of 15 years, will be due for replacement around 2021.

That might be the perfect time for Butler County to move in a different direction — one that Brewer specifically cited as holding a potential for high cost savings: postal voting.

The National Conference of State Legislatures says that at least 22 states allow at least some elections to be conducted via mail. Three states — Oregon, Washington and Colorado — hold all their elections that way.

Yes, it is a giant step away from a deep-seated American tradition: hitting the polls on election day to do your civic duty. But slumping voter turnout numbers have, for years, made clear that tradition resonates with fewer and fewer Americans.

Moving to a system that produces a paper trail, saves the county hundreds of thousands of dollars each year and improves voter confidence and satisfaction in the process is a move worthy of consideration.

Going postal might end up being the sanest move Pennsylvania has ever made when it comes to elections.