Thank you, fellow Toastmasters. Thank you for that very warm introduction. My name is Dale Frey, and today I'm going to talk to you about the Denton County Commissioners Court and what they do. But first, what is a commissioner and what is it that they do? I know that you might think to yourself, well, I
think of Commissioner Gordon from Batman. It's the job to man the bat signal. Well, not exactly. So let's talk about what the county commissioner's job is, because it's a very wide spectrum. It's not just to facilitate the county budget and tax rates and manage the roads and bridges, but it's also to oversee our libraries, our public buildings, and very much
importantly, our elect uh our elections is something they manage as well. When it comes to health care, right now I want to advocate for trying to settle our opioid settlement fund, which is still not allocated even after two years. We also need to stand tall against a lot of book banners who have come out and tried to uh have funding cut to our libraries.
Full disclosure, the county commissioners' court does not have the ability to administer over libraries that are being administered by an ISD or a city council already. However, if a library is receiving funding from the county, then that could be cut. And we've seen some uh advocates on the other side of the aisle advocate for that and past time. But when it comes to the county commissioners court, the
most important job is overseeing our elections. The county commissioners are the ones who approve the voting locations. The county commissioners are the ones who decide what voting equipment that we have and use and don't use in our elections. This is really important. For example, if you notice that your voting location seems
to change constantly all the time or more frequently than you would like, well, then you should be mad at your county commissioner. It is their job to manage the voting locations. I will also say, according to Texas Election Code section 43.031c, all schools should be able to be voting centers or voting location rather,. Uh that is according to Texas law
So when it comes to these primaries where Democrats and Republicans seem to have to vote in different buildings, that is kind of needless because we should be able to put them together, uh, which would be a little bit more efficient. But most importantly, I'm going to spend a good half of my time, if not more, talking about voting centers or count county-wide voting here in Texas.
This is something we do not have right now in Denton County, and is at the fault of the Denton County commissioners. When I say we do not have voting centers, I mean that while you can vote at any voting location throughout the county during early voting, you cannot vote in any voting location on the last day to vote or election day itself.
This is something that is very confusing to people to go to a place and realize that they cannot vote at that location, and then when and when they get uh redirected, they get very mad about that. Doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican, no one likes being told that you can't vote here and you have to go somewhere else. We've seen this happen to 15% of voters on the
May primary runoff election on that election day, and we saw that happen to 11% of voters on uh the following election later. But don't just take it from me, take it from Jane here. She's an election worker, and she has a lot to say about this herself. Some were sent to precincts as far away as Sanger
and Auburn. Quite a few of these people came from another wrong prowling precinct before they reached us, and several had been sent to two wrong precincts before they reached us. These people included a man in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank strapped on the back. Who had a cannula up his nose. He had to be hydraulically lifted out of his vehicle
and back into it when we told him go someplace else. They included two people on walkers who struggled to stay upright as they came in, and we told them, sorry, you can't vote here. a And they included woman so disabled she could not get out of her car.
And we had to go help her in her car and then say, sorry, you're in the wrong place. Go someplace else. This is very frustrating to people, and it's really not fair. Uh, this is something that we, the Democratic Party, have been advocating for. We've been advocating for voting centers so that people don't
get redirected like that. Uh, unfortunately, we still don't have voting centers. Unfortunately, it has become partisan. Apparently, the current uh commissioners right now, who are all Republican, all four of them, and the judge are Republican. In private, they say they won't vote in favor of voting centers because they're afraid of getting primaried. And I see why, because while we in the Democratic
Party have been advocating in favor of voting centers or countywide voting, we have seen the other side of the aisle do the opposite. Melinda Preston, for example, has pushed all sorts of conspiracy theories saying it would make things easier it make it cheating easier, uh but yet not giving eviden evidence as to why she says so. Charles Lee is another guy who referenced a whole bunch
of conspiracy theories by Beverly Fo uh Beverly Foley. Beverly Foley, for those who don't know, is the owner of the secure your vote texas.com website, where the top headline is we need to take back control of our elections from our county commissioners court, even though they're all Republicans. What we're seeing right here, right now on this website, among other things, is Republican precinct chairs being against their
own Republican county commissioners. In fact, not only that, but the RNC itself has come out with mandates as well being against voting centers, among other things. Republican Party, I'm this morning. I'm here as a representative of the Denton County Republican Party. I'm precinct chair.
We passed the resolution. at our last county executive committee meeting and like to read this to you Resolution to the Denton County Commissioners Court regarding the use of electronic voting devices, elimination of voting centers, and placing the county clerk in control of elections again. Whereas we represent a minimum of 53.2% of the electorate, whereas we believe voting should be in our precincts on paper, hand marked, hand counted using manual poll books.
Therefore, be it resolved that the executive committee of the Denton County Republican Party hereby requests the Denton County Commissioners' Court to turn to handmarked hand-counted paper ballots and use manual poll books and vote in our precincts. Further, we ask that the commissioner's court withdraw from the Texas Secretary of State's voting center program and its required use of electronic poll books immediately. So in conclusion, because I'm running out of time, we
have seen that this unfortunately has become partisan and it's become so partisan. I almost kind of think to myself that I might not be facing Brandon Faulkner, our current county commissioner of precinct two when I run, because he might get primaried. So we really need to focus on advocating our county commissioners to be in favor of these things that I talked about, especially voting centers.
And I look forward to trying to advocate for voting centers myself. It may be that we we may have to flip seats in order to get these voting centers, but I look forward to advocating for it and continuing to push for this. Thank you, fellow Toastmasters, for your time. Thank you.
Thank you, Bill. That was a wonderful, wonderful dispute, and I got to learn.
