Updated at 1:26 p.m. to reflect a release of information by the Dallas County Elections Department.

In her debut as a volunteer poll watcher for an Irving City Council runoff, Mona Elshenawy says she got a crash course in how easily election rules can be broken.

Her job: keep her eyes peeled for antics that could interfere with voting, such as candidates trying to recruit voters within 100 feet of the polling place. Or campaign volunteers talking to voters or using their cellphones inside the voting room.

Al Zapanta, who won the runoff election for a seat on the Irving City Council by 102 votes, is alleged to have tried to recruit voters inside the polling place building. (courtesy)

But soon after Elshenawy arrived at her assigned polling place on June 16, she witnessed the eventual winner, Al Zapanta, and two of his campaign workers violate those rules, she said in a complaint to the Dallas County Elections Department. She also discovered that her own appointment as a poll watcher — by Zapanta’s opponent Shayan Elahi — broke the rules because she lives in Dallas, not Irving.

The Dallas district attorney’s office has launched an investigation into Elshenawy’s allegations. The office declined to provide details, saying that could interfere with the prosecution of election crimes.

Plenty of arcane rules surround polling practices, but taken together they are intended to preserve the integrity of the voting process. So election administrators and prosecutors take them seriously.

Shayan Elahi, who ran against Zapanta for Irving City Council place 6. (Facebook / Facebook)

"What I witnessed was disturbing,'' Elshenawy said in her lengthy report, obtained by The Dallas Morning News, which noted she twice called county election officials to report violations that day, and heard Zapanta's two poll watchers at the site repeatedly disparage minorities.

She believes Irving was deprived of an “honest and fair election.’’

The investigation marks at least the second time in the last year that the DA has probed breakdowns in the oversight of a suburban Dallas election. A Cedar Hill election judge and clerk were accused of spying on black voters' ballots, discussing how they voted and using cellphones. To avoid charges, the two poll workers struck a plea bargain that temporarily banned them from election work.

In Irving, the polling place election judge, who is responsible for enforcing the rules, shrugged off Elshenawy's concerns that day and allowed Zapanta's campaign workers free rein, she said in her complaint and in an interview with The News. Zapanta won the contest by 102 votes.

The judge, Johnny Lopez, declined to comment for this story, saying in an email that he was dealing with a health crisis.

Zapanta acknowledged to The News that he was greeting voters inside the polling place and just outside its doors but insists he wasn't campaigning.

Zapanta also said his two poll watchers, whom he would not name, acted appropriately. The Dallas County elections office has declined to release copies of Elshenawy's complaint and responses of those at the center of her allegations, citing the DA investigation. On Thursday, the office released the names of several poll watchers who worked for Zapanta during the runoff, and The News is trying to identify the ones cited in the complaint.

“These are quality, qualified people that know what they’re doing,” Zapanta said of his poll watchers.

For his part, Elahi acknowledged that Elshenawy’s appointment — as well as another one of his poll watchers who was ruled ineligible at another voting site — was a mistake. He said election officials should bear the responsibility for vetting such volunteers.

As in Cedar Hill, Irving's election also featured racial or ethnic overtones. Mailers sent to some residents urged them to vote against Elahi, a Muslim, and against "extremism" in the city.

And Elshenawy said the two poll watchers for Zapanta snickered at a family that appeared to be of Muslim descent. One also made cracks about overweight Latino children, she said.

The potential violations in Irving, coupled with what happened in Cedar Hill, raise questions about whether the Dallas County elections department and area cities, which share in the oversight of elections, provide enough training for workers in official rules as well as racial sensitivity, said Anthony Bond, founder of the Irving chapter of the NAACP.

“The county elections department has a very difficult job,’’ said Bond, who spoke with Elshenawy about her complaint. “But there should be more training before anyone can sign up.’’

Enforcing policies

Irving’s City Council election was marred by controversies this year.

The race for the seat that Zapanta eventually won originally featured three candidates on the May general election ballot. But one was ruled ineligible after Irving city officials learned that she did not have enough verifiable signatures on her petition for candidacy.

That left Zapanta and Elahi in a runoff contest. Zapanta, a recently retired CEO of the United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, which has an office in Irving, narrowly won amid criticisms that he had misrepresented his educational credentials by making it appear he had a doctoral degree.

The 77-year-old Zapanta, who is Hispanic, is one of only two minorities, including an African American, now serving on a council dominated by white men. The 238,289-population suburb is majority Hispanic.

Under state law, candidates can appoint their own poll watchers to monitor activity at voting sites — a routine practice, particularly in close or contested elections. Elahi had asked Elshenawy, a research consultant for the health care industry who had helped him campaign, to be a poll watcher the day before the runoff.

In an interview with The News, Elshenawy said that she studied Texas election rules the night before taking her post at the Cimarron Recreation Center polling site in North Irving.

The Cimarron Recreation Center, 201 Red River Trail in Irving, Texas (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

She knew the code prohibited electioneering within 100 feet of a polling place — a misdemeanor offense — as well as the use of cellphones by poll watchers and voters. The code also discourages poll watchers and other volunteers from communicating with voters.

She was alarmed, she said, when Zapanta introduced himself to her inside the recreation center, and also greeted a family, “telling them about his campaign.’’

Zapanta told The News that he did have conversations with voters inside the recreation center.

He said he occasionally walked into the voting room to get updates on vote totals. He also greeted a couple inside the building, but only after they approached him first as he made his way to the restroom, Zapanta said.

“I don’t think that was a violation,” he said. He stressed that his interaction with the couple, though inside the building, was not inside the actual voting room.

Elshenawy also saw Zapanta’s poll watchers use their cellphones, and once saw Zapanta’s name appear on one of the phones’ screens.

When Elshenawy asked the election judge why the cellphone rule wasn’t being enforced, he told her it was a “technicality,” she said.

She grew more distressed, she said, when Zapanta’s two poll watchers kept striking up conversations with her, and spoke to voters twice inside the voting room, though she didn’t provide details in her complaint. State guidelines say poll watchers should not speak with voters except to call attention to irregularities at the polling site, she noted in her report.

One of the poll watchers “asked a lot of personal questions and interrogated me on which candidate I supported.” Elshenawy complained to Lopez, but he told her that poll watchers could speak to each other as long as they didn’t speak to any of the voters, she said.

In her complaint, Elshenawy, who is Latina, said she was “sickened by the bigotry'' she heard from them.

Elshenawy asked to leave

Later that day around noon, after Elshenawy had repeatedly voiced concerns about the rule breaking, she was asked to leave. The election judge told her that he had gotten word that only Irving residents were eligible to be poll watchers, her complaint states.

Elshenawy wasn’t the only poll watcher for Elahi deemed ineligible. Former state Rep. Terri Hodges was asked to leave another voting site for the runoff, in light of her 2010 conviction for federal tax fraud tied to a Dallas City Hall corruption case. Elahi said he did not know of Hodge’s conviction.

Zapanta said Elshenawy’s claims sound like someone who was trying to retaliate for being kicked out of the polling location.

“If she knew better, then why was she there?” Zapanta said.

Irving City Secretary Shanae Jennings (City of Irving)

The Irving city secretary, Shanae Jennings, told The News that she reminded both Elahi and Zapanta on the morning of the runoff election to observe poll-watcher guidelines.

“I will say in their defense, poll watching is tricky,” she said. Jennings said the city has never had issues with Lopez, the election judge.

Toni Pippins-Poole, Dallas County’s elections administrator, said Elshenawy’s complaint, by procedure, will be reviewed by a citizen advisory committee in September. It could offer recommendations on how to improve the process, including whether the election judge should keep his job.

“We take such matters seriously,’’ she said in an email on Wednesday. Her office already provides multiple “training classes and labs on election procedures, sensitivity training for handling voters that are disabled, as well as providing super customer service attitude training before an election.’’

Toni Pippins-Poole said a citizen advisory committee in September will review what happened at the Irving voting site. (File Photo / Staff)

Zapanta said he’s ready to move on now that he’s on the council.

“It’s over,” he said. “I won. Get on with it.”

Brooks Love, chief of staff for Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia, said the commissioners will review any citizen advisory committee findings.

“We always want to make sure at every polling location that the election code and policies are being enforced to the letter and spirit of the law,” Love said.