Speak at Progressive Toastmasters for a second week in a row

About test masters, and also the speech is meant for a lot of people on Carleton because my sort of persuasive speech is to try to make sure that the people, especially those in Carleton, those Democrats vote after that. I'll get into that as to why that's gonna be an issue. I want to talk today about the County Commissioner's Court. I'm running for Denton County Commissioner Precinct 2, and there's

two main points of contention voting centers and 287G, which sounds like a mouthful. But let me start with voting centers. Right now, and also tomorrow, by the way, is voting day. More specifically, it's the last day to vote, and the last day to vote has very special rules that does not have the same rules as early voting.

You can only vote at your one voting location. You cannot vote anywhere in the county like you can during early voting. You can only vote at your one location and just on the last day to vote. This is confusing the people and it causes all sorts of redirects, and this is something that we in the Denton County Democratic Party straight up see as voter suppression.

We have seen college kids come up and say, Oh man, I gotta make it to class, and I can't, I guess I can't vote today. James Schultz was telling me a story of a man who was in a wheelchair had to be hydraulically lifted out of his car. He's on a breathing machine, rolled in, got told, I'm sorry, sir, you've got to go somewhere else.

This is straight up voter suppression. The Denton County Republican Party makes all sorts of accusations like, oh well, if we have this, then you know, people will be able to vote in one place, then vote again in another location. That's not true. As soon as that machine scans your driver's license, it's marked in the system, and every four minutes there's a

broadcast signal that goes from uh from the central unit to all the other voting locations and saying, hey, this person has voted already, they cannot vote again. Another accusation by uh Melinda Preston, the chair of the Denton County Republican Party, says that uh if we uh I'll have voters vote at their one voting precinct, it will help people to get to know their precinct chair. As a precinct chair, I tell you, this is nonsense.

I'm not hanging out at the voting location all day for every single day of early voted. And also, it's nonsensical to say that countywide voting is insecure when we already have it for that multi-day early voting period, but not on the one last day of vote. This is targeted voter suppression I'm not, I should have timed myself because I don't

know how much time I have. I want to go into 287G next, which sounds like a mouthful. It's a contract between Denton County and ICE. 287G is a contract program that deputizes local law enforcement as ICE officers. This is a type of thing where I need to I'm even stressed here.

If I had a Republican audience, this was a mixed audience, then I would say the following. Donald Trump's so-called one big beautiful bill already desperately overfunds ICE. ICE is very well funded. Why should my local property taxes have to go up further in order to support a local ICE program here in Denton County?

These officers, by the way, cannot leave Denton County. They cannot go to border. They're confined within the county because the officers under Sheriff Tracy Murphy. The next point of contention we need to go into that ties into this ICE operation is the fact that we have zero federal jails here. We have zero state jails, and we only have one

county jail here in Denton County. And this is why the ICE situation is going to be a compounded issue here in Denton County. Because we have a really bad track record here in our prisons here in Denton County. He was arrested because he was having a mental health crisis. Grandma called 911.

He was put in jail. And in um September 13th of 2023, he was pronounced dead, and the Tarrant County Medical Examiner found that the cause of death could be dehydration. A 27-year old died in Denton County prison due to dehydration. And now that grandmother's suit in the county. There's a couple other instances.

Thsere another incident of a woman suing the county because uh her job was forced off and they would not allow her to wear her head job. another There was also mysterious death that also happened as well here in Devon County, but we do not have a very good track record here in our Denton County jail. And so what keeps me up at night, what I

fear is if ICE officers are going to do here what they're doing in other cities, because we see on CNN and MSNBC how ICE officers are just grabbing people off the streets and out there in certain cities. Donald Trump says he's gonna send them out to all the woke areas. Is that UNT? UNT is right here in Denton County.

If ICE was to come here to UNT and just patrol around, you know those college kids are gonna protest. We already see that ICE will just grab anyone who protests against them. Our jails have a bad track record as it is. If those ICE officers grab someone, throw them into our Denton County jail, and then walk away. We are the ones who are held responsible for anything

bad that happens to them, or any injuries that they sustained, or God forbid, like in the case of Keith Aaron Verde, this 27-year-old, if he dies, we get sued. And when I say that we the county get sued, that means our property taxes paid for that. So I stand strongly against this ICE integration. I vote in favor of I am standing in favor of voting centuries.

Now here comes the third part. So I need to talk about my political opponent. He's a very liked man, and this is why this election is going to be actually very difficult. It looks like this should be easy because my political opponent only won during the Biden midterm administration only by two and a half percentage points in the center. But I can tell you this.

Two members of the Carrollton Democratic Club, the board members told me to not run for this because they said, hey, he's very well liked, you can have a hard time. I've met multiple people at the Carrollton Democratic Club who know this guy. My own pastor knows him when I mentioned his name. Like this guy is very well known.

He's what he was the mayor of Carrollton for nearly a decade. So this is going to be a really uphill battle And what I need to do right now is persuade everyone for my fellow Carrollton Democrats to vote Democrat. I know that he's the Carleton mayor for a very long time. But I want to put this out there.

Kevin Faulkner is a good man. He has the acumen to know that 287G is bad. Because when he was the mayor of Carrollton, he voted in terminated 287G in the Carleton level. By the way, I should mention that city councils can override county commissioners within their within their cities. So he voted against it. But now that he's the commissioner, now that there's an

R next to his name, he voted in favor of 287G and applied it to the entire county. So as in a mayor role, when he was a nonpartisan mayor, he voted against it. He terminated it. But now as a county commissioner, he's voting in favor of it. And he's also very silent.

He's not talking at all of anything one way or the other about voting centers, even when asked. So I want to say this. I like Kevin Faulkner. I do. I like my opponent. But as much as I like him, I would like county white voting on election day even more.

As much as I like Kevin, I would really like us to end this connection that we have with ICE at the county level even more. And that's why I'm running for this position. And that's why I want to persuade everyone, especially in Carrollton. I know that your beloved mayor is very well liked, but he's not voting in our favor.

And that is why we need someone to run in this election, and that's why I'm filling this role. I thank you for your time, and I hope to persuade you towards this election. Thank you very much.