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Donald Parish Jr. wants a second chance at winning a seat on the Dallas City Council — and is asking the state’s highest court to stop the city from closing the book on his request.
The pastor came in third during last month’s general election to represent South Dallas’ District 7, missing the runoff by 28 votes. But in a legal complaint filed May 21, first reported by D Magazine, Parish says problems at several South Dallas polling locations on May 1 cast doubt on the results in a close race.
Parish’s attorney is also claiming the city violated Texas election code when it moved forward with Saturday’s runoff without a judge resolving the original complaint.
Elizabeth Alvarez, who represents Parish, said she planned Tuesday to formally ask the Texas Supreme Court to halt the city from certifying the results of Saturday’s District 7 runoff won by incumbent Adam Bazaldua. The city plans to canvass the results from all six runoff races on Monday.
The goal, Alvarez said, is to have a court order a new election. It could be between Bazaldua and Parish or a three-way runoff between the top three finishers.
Parish was endorsed by Mayor Eric Johnson and trailed former City Council member Kevin Felder for the second spot in the June 5 runoff.
Incumbent Adam Bazaldua was reelected Saturday by more than 28 percentage points.
Alvarez, in an interview with, acknowledged the bid for another election was a long shot.
“The standard of proof is very high and they’re difficult to win,” she said. “And there are maybe 10 lawyers in the state that have filed these types of challenges before or know how to do so.”
Parish’s gambit to overturn the election is rare but not unprecedented, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. However, Texas courts have avoided interfering in elections.
“It’s a tough case to make,” he said. “It would require a specific cause of action and proof that these vote centers were the culprit in not providing opportunities for people to vote for him. Because he came in third, it may be hard for a court to step in and intervene.”
County officials have not disputed that there were several issues concentrated in District 7, which includes the Fair Park neighborhood.
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Dallas County Elections Administrator Michael Scarpello told city officials on May 12 that broken voting machines, a lack of electrical outlets and extension cords, and other issues in at least nine voting sites delayed their 7 a.m. opening time on election day and caused voters to be turned away. Three of those sites were in District 7, including at the Park South YMCA, which opened almost four hours late.
There were also concerns that voters who wanted to cast a ballot on election day were left without information on how to do so. One voter who was turned away from the YMCA on election day last month told The News he didn’t return to cast his ballot after that. Another voter said workers at the same polling location didn’t mention a 2019 county rule change allowing people to cast ballots at any voting site.
The issues caused outrage among several members of the City Council, who ultimately voted not to commit to paying nearly $1.5 million for the county to oversee the runoff. How the county will be paid is still under negotiation, the city said Tuesday.
Parish filed a request with the city for a manual recount on May 13 — the day after the council decided to not pay the county bill. City Secretary Bilierae Johnson said Parish didn’t pay the full deposit for a recount before the May 14 deadline and his request was rejected. The deposit amount was around $15,000.
Parish said he couldn’t afford the fee, which Johnson said mainly went toward covering county staff time. So he filed the legal complaint contesting the general election results on May 21 in Dallas County Court. Early voting for the runoff began three days later.
The county notified the city about the suit the day before the runoff, Alvarez said. At that point, the city was supposed to cancel the District 7 election until a judge ruled on Parish’s challenge.
“They knew it existed before Saturday, but they are continuing to count the results anyway in violation of the law because they just don’t care,” she said. Alvarez provided The News with a screenshot of an email from Dallas City Attorney Chris Caso to council members, City Manager T.C. Broadnax and other city officials about Parish’s legal petition. She said the email was sent Friday.
Alvarez also forwarded an email she sent to Caso on Monday demanding the city not certify the election results in the race and saying she planned to take the case to the state Supreme Court if the city didn’t agree to comply by noon on Tuesday.
Assistant City Attorney Charles Estee responded to Alvarez’s email Tuesday saying the city wasn’t officially notified of Parish’s challenge.
“Likewise, the City denies the allegation that it was aware of the election contest prior to the election being underway,” Estee wrote. “The City cannot agree to your request not to proceed with certification of the election results.”
Caso and a city spokesperson declined to comment to The News about the case Tuesday. The Dallas County elections department, which ran the election for the city, declined to comment due to ongoing litigation.
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Bazaldua described Parish’s challenge as “unfortunate” and said he planned to “continue to focus on moving our district forward and continue on the timeline we have laid out.”
“We had nine polling sites with issues and we didn’t see anyone else who didn’t make the runoff try to contest the election result,” Bazaldua said. “Nothing can be contested without any of those other districts also being considered.”
The District 7 race had the smallest margin between the second- and third-place vote-getters, county records show. The next smallest margin in a race with at least one voting center problem was 884 votes in District 14.
Felder declined to comment.
Parish said the polling center issues continued the disenfranchisement of Black voters who believe their ballots don’t matter. He said he’s had such conversations with friends, family and other residents in the weeks since the May 1 election.
“We can’t have something like this happen in a very close and critical election in the most hotly contested council race and nothing be done about it,” Parish said. “We cannot accept that.”