‘Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

That’s what the Declaration of Independence states. After winning independence, Americans instituted a government and codified it in the U.S. Constitution. Derived consent has expanded from some men to all adult citizens. The 16th Amendment states: “The rights of citizens … to vote shall not be denied or abridged…on account of race.” The 19th Amendment guaranteed the right of women to vote.

But what if the people doubt whether the leaders elected are acting with their consent? In other words, what if they conclude that the elections are “rigged” or outside influences are monkeying with the results?

Then we have big problems.

That is what made President-elect Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail so dangerous. Without evidence, he repeated at multiple campaign events his belief that the process, at least in some key communities, was not an honest attempt to determine the consent of the governed but an act of stagecraft with a predetermined outcome.

“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary – but also at many polling places – SAD,” Trump tweeted in the closing days of the campaign.

Trump saw this as a means to fire up his base, sending the message that they would have to come out in overwhelming numbers to overcome the attempts to fix the outcome for his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Many bought into it.

In mid-October, a Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 73 percent of Republicans thought the election could be stolen from Trump, while only 17 percent of Democrats bought into the potential for a fraudulent result. One can only imagine the reaction from Trump supporters if it had been Clinton winning a narrow victory and without taking the popular vote.

Even victory did not end Trump’s baseless explanations, Tweeting on Nov. 27 that, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Neither he nor his staff offered evidence to back up that claim. In repeated court challenges to laws restricting access to voting, advocates for identification and other rules have failed to produce evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Though going into the election it was Republicans, far more than Democrats, who feared vote tampering, Clinton supporters, after seeing Trump win key victories by narrow margins in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, raised their own fears about suspect results tied to hacking or voting software. After seeing their candidate damaged by the steady release of stolen internal campaign emails, with Russian cyber spies considered the likely culprits, some paranoia in the Clinton camp was no surprise. Clinton herself has refrained from alluding to possible manipulated votes.

Conspiracy theories will always be popular with some percentage of the populace. There is nothing that can be done to assure full confidence in U.S. elections. But efforts must begin immediately to repair the damage done by this particular election with the goal of getting back to a place where the vast majority of voters are confident their votes are counted honestly.

That begins with candidates refraining from any suggestions that the process is dishonest, unless they have compelling evidence of fraud.

States need to provide voting processes that assure results can be verified and any attempts to manipulate results easily detected. In that regard, Connecticut is a leader.

Connecticut made the right choice in employing a system in which voters use paper ballots fed into counting scanners. If for any reason doubts emerge about the reliability of the scanners, paper ballots remain to be viewed and hand-counted.

By law, the state also conducts an audit after every election. One is underway now in which poll workers at 31 randomly selected voting precincts — including in Groton, East Lyme, Montville and Stonington — representing 5 percent of polling places, are hand-counting ballots to make sure the results line up with the vote totals provided by the scanners. Any evidence of skullduggery or error will result in an expanded investigation of election results.

Contrast this with a state like Pennsylvania, where 1980s-era electronic voting machines produce no paper trail for election officials to check or recount. It is one of several such states. About half the states have no required audit process to double check for election fairness.

The nation needs to follow Connecticut’s lead in reassuring the public that there is a fair counting of votes by the governed.