The Cameron County Commissioners Court announced this morning during a meeting that they will receive a $250, 973 grant that will help with voter access and opening up polling stations in the area.
The grant comes from the USC Schwarzenegger Institute.
Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger hopped on a Zoom call Tuesday morning during the meeting to talk about his investment in the county and the two voting super centers his grant will help fund.
“They will give the ability to of 20,000 to 24,000 voters to vote,” Schwarzenegger said. “So many people are out there talking about and inspiring other people to go out and vote and I said, ‘that is all great, but if you don’t always have the ability to vote it makes it very difficult,’ so I said, ‘let’s open up some centers that sometimes closed down because of various different reasons including reasons like, financial reasons.’”
Schwarzenegger said he’s always happy to invest in a project like this because it allows everyone to participate in Democracy and vote.
“Because it’s really the best thing we can do in order to really direct the country to go in the right direction,” Schwarzenegger said. “No matter what you believe… I think you got to participate because it’s not going to help sitting in front of the television set and to argue and scream and say this is not done right and America is going in the wrong direction, or this politician is going in the wrong direction.”
Schwarzenegger said, as an immigrant, he believes it’s important that everyone votes and told the commissioners if there’s any other way he could help to please let him and his team know, so they can open up as many polling stations as possible so people can vote.
Cameron County Judge Eddite Treviño Jr. told Schwarzenegger that they appreciate the contribution.
“The fact that you and your institute have seen and given us this opportunity to increase our voter participation here in south Texas and in Cameron County speaks volumes to how much of an important item this is for you,” Treviño said.
Schwarzenegger said Cameron County is the first recipient of this grant. There are 217,137 people registered to vote in the county, according to Cameron County Elections Administrator Remi Garza.
