Candidates’ faces on punching bags linked to 37 uncounted ballots in Michigan

Punching bags hanging inside Hamtramck’s city clerk’s office — one with mayoral candidate Muhith Mahmood’s face taped to it — helped set off a chain of events that left 37 ballots uncounted in the city’s Nov. 5 mayoral election, a race Mahmood lost by just 11 votes.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

Mahmood, a former city council member, told Votebeat the episode has left him and his supporters questioning the outcome. “We all talk about transparency,” he said. “This is not a good example.”

Mayor Adam Alharbi, who defeated Mahmood in the race for mayor and was sworn in in January, confirmed Tuesday that the punching bags were one reason interim City Manager Alexander Lagrou and a number of other unauthorized city officials entered the clerk’s office after the polls closed on Election Day. Aside from Mahmood, the image of a City Council candidate whose name is not yet public was also featured on the bags.

Inside the office were 37 uncounted absentee ballots. Officials’ entry broke the chain of custody, and canvassers ultimately chose not to count them as a result. Though those ballots could have changed the outcome of the narrowly decided race, they were not part of the count — including the recount requested by Mahmood, which slightly increased Alharbi’s margin of victory from 6 to 11 votes.

The fallout has upended Hamtramck City Hall. Former City Clerk Rana Faraj’s firing was reported Tuesday by The Detroit News, with officials citing the punching bags and the handling of the ballots as reasons for her dismissal. Meanwhile, Mahmood has appealed a judge’s decision allowing the ballots to remain excluded, leaving the legitimacy of the razor-thin result under continued scrutiny.

That December ruling said that canvassers had the authority to leave the 37 ballots out of the final count. The case now sits before the Michigan Court of Appeals.

No one knows who cast those ballots or who they were for. Months after Alharbi was sworn in as the city’s new mayor, Mahmood and his supporters still harbor doubts.

“Whoever they voted for, that should be in the count,” Mahmood said.

Alharbi maintains that the 37 ballots “came after the election” and should not have been counted to begin with. He has referred to them in the past as “fraudulent,” a characterization disputed by other officials and Mahmood’s lawyers.

Alharbi told Votebeat the decision to fire Faraj was tied in part to what he called “a clear lack of professional neutrality in office” as well as procedural errors relating to elections.

Faraj was placed on paid leave shortly after the November election. In December, she filed a lawsuit alleging that several city officials were retaliating against her for trying to flag “ongoing election integrity issues” in the city.

An attorney representing Faraj did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

How did Hamtramck get here?

Faraj has said that her staff noticed the discrepancy between the number of ballots received and those tabulated on election night. The missing 37 ballots, Deputy Clerk Abe Siblani told Votebeat in November, were the result of “human error at the counting board” where ballots are supposed to be fed into the tabulator.

In her lawsuit, Faraj suggested the problem occurred after workers cut the ballot envelopes open but then mistakenly mixed them with empty envelopes instead of tabulating them.

The ballots were unaccounted for until Nov. 7, when they were discovered, sealed, and ultimately delivered to the county under police escort.

By then, Lagrou and several other non-election officials had already entered the office — a move that broke the ballots’ chain of custody, the system meant to ensure the secure transfer of election documents throughout the election process. City officials have said no one knew the ballots were there at the time. But once the chain was broken, the fight over whether the ballots could be counted began.

Canvassers ultimately declined to take action, leaving the 37 ballots out of the final results.

Uncertainty in a city wracked by election problems

The dispute has unfolded against a backdrop of broader election turmoil in Hamtramck.

In August, two council members were charged with felonies after allegedly forging signatures on absentee ballots during the city’s 2023 council elections. One of them, Muhtasin Sadman, pleaded guilty to reduced charges late last month. The other, Mohammed Hassan, is scheduled for a jury trial next month, according to court records.

Four other men — including three current council members — were named in an April document Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel used to seek a special prosecutor in the case. Nessel has been a vocal critic against Hamtramck’s LGBTQ policies and the petition notes that critics have accused her of bringing other prosecutions due to anti-Muslim bias. Monroe County Prosecutor Jeffery Yorkey has been appointed, but did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

No other charges have been filed.

Alharbi said Hamtramck is working to rebuild its reputation and show “we’re not that anymore,” pushing back against assumptions that city officials are criminals. The punching bags are gone, he said, and he looks forward to welcoming in a new clerk. Alharbi said the city already has applicants for the job.

“And now,” he said, “we have a secure door on that office.”

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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