People Post is a space for opinion pieces, letters to the editor and guest submissions from members of the Long Beach community. The following is an op-ed submitted by James “Henk” Conn, a Long Beach resident and educator. He was a candidate for mayor in 2016. The following does not necessarily reflect the views of the Long Beach Post.

After I voted in the last election, I was handed a flyer on the changes in the coming elections. I read that L.A. County was going to stop having polling places on Election Day. The replacement would be extended kiosks throughout the city. While this bothers me personally—I enjoy the act and tradition of casting my vote on paper—I spent some time reading on the matter and how it affects the voters as a whole.

I have read about technological mishaps, computerized voting machines with modems that were able to be hacked. I have read about lobbyists for private companies influencing the support for this new technology.  Not completely for the sake of democracy or transparency, but for profit.

I have read that without paper, recounts will be a thing of the past. Personally, as someone who is invested in the hope of a change in 2020, I ask the reader to imagine a year down the road and how it would be possible for a standing president to discount a technology and an election, to a base that might not understand the nuances of computers, without the ability to have a recount.

Imagine a generation that is easily frustrated by technology and the barriers of using this technology could have on voter turnout. And what will we do without the ability for a recount; and can we really rely on the Supreme Court (or locally appointed parties) to decide our fate?

Technology is a recent world, and finding apt examples to compare its effects to an equal is difficult.  While there may be more fitting examples, I want to turn to TigerConnect, a texting application purchased by the LBPD for official communications. A main feature of the application is that it erases text minutes after it’s sent. After the discovery of its use by the LBPD, I believe by the discovery of a purchase order, the city was put to action only by the embarrassment put on it by the press.  After a review of the process by an “objective” party, no evidence was put forth to the city, only the decision that no law was broken.

Taken to a grander scale, this kind of “experiment” taken to elections could prove to be disastrous.  When we have our recent election hacked by foreign agents, people believe that those with merely opposing views on social media are paid foreign “trolls.”  If the elections were to lose legitimacy in this same way, it would be possible that political parties could accuse election results as illegitimate.

The city seems to be in a very strange phase of adjustment. We have fewer candidates, we have candidates who run unopposed, and some candidates only have to face an outsider who has nothing more than a puncher’s chance of winning.

This city requires the intelligence of its press and people to get answers on this topic for themselves. Don’t let a flyer tell you everything you need to know. And, most certainly, don’t wait until next Election Day to communicate your concerns.  Lastly, I put it on the press to not wait until the next election cycle to investigate an issue that will change local and federal elections.

We are California; we carry a lot of delegates in the next election. Long Beach really matters.