Court decision could clear the way for a mayoral change

By Charles Sercombe
Hamtramck’s mayoral election is about to take yet another twist and turn.
And now, there’s a very real chance Mayor Adam Alharbi will be replaced by his challenger from last November’s city election, Muhith Mahmood.
Alharbi made his last appeal to the state Supreme Court to prevent 37 uncounted ballots from November’s election from being included in the final tally.
The court rejected Alharbi’s appeal for the court to intervene for the second, and apparently final, time.
That denial opens the door to having the 37 disputed ballots be counted in the next couple of weeks.
The ballots in question were discovered a day after November’s election but Wayne County declined to include them in the final vote tally.
That decision set the wheels in motion for Alharbi’s challenger, former councilmember Mahmood, to successfully convince the state appeals court to allow the ballots to be counted.
Mahmood lost the mayoral election by 11 votes, and the thinking is that including the 37 ballots in question to the final count could work in his favor.
The precinct where the uncounted ballots came from is dominated by Bangladesh immigrants. Mahmood is also an immigrant from Bangladesh.
Mayor Alharbi is a Yemeni immigrant, and the political division between the Bengali and Yemeni communities has deepened in recent months.
The Wayne County Board of Canvassers split in a 2-2 vote on whether to include the ballots in November’s count, a deadlock which automatically – by law — triggered the ballots to not be counted.
Mahmood didn’t give up. He went to a Wayne County Circuit Court initially, but struck out there.
Mayor Alharbi had successfully argued that the uncounted ballots could have been tampered with, and thus were not eligible to be counted.
But Mahmood took his case to the state appeals court and ultimately prevailed there. The court ruled that the ballots of the 37 voters should be included in the election, and that it was not the fault of those voters that the clerk’s office had misplaced the ballots.
Alharbi then unsuccessfully asked the state’s supreme court to consider the matter. The court rejected his request, but Alharbi didn’t stop there.
He appealed once again, but, once again, the court stood firm in its rejection.
Mahmood’s reaction to the Supreme Court allowing the ballots to be counted was, “Justice is served.”
His attorney, Mark Brewer, told the publication Votebeat Michigan that, “This is a great victory for democracy and for the rights of voters to have their votes counted.”
Alharbi was critical of the decision, telling The Review:
“While it is disappointing that the Supreme Court declined to review this important election matter, especially given that the Court of Appeals decision itself was split 2-1, my primary concern has never been about my seat.
“It is about the future of our city. During the recount, it became apparent that roughly 100 ballots had clear alterations, where votes cast for me were erased and replaced with my opponent’s name. The Wayne County Board of Canvassers judged those findings suspicious, and rightly submitted the issue to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.
“When you combine that with video evidence of groups dropping off large volumes of ballots, patterns of ballot harvesting, the bizarre situation where additional uncounted ballots kept surfacing months later inside storage areas of the clerk’s office, and a broken chain of custody, the integrity of the process is fundamentally compromised.”
Alharbi, who has been in office for almost eight months, also brought up the issue of whether Mahmood is a resident in the city.
Mahmood has vigorously denied accusations that he actually lives in Troy with his family, or that he resides in an apartment on Holbrook only for appearances.
A past investigation by a law firm into several legal matters showed strong evidence that both Mahmood and Councilmember Abu Musa do not formally reside in the city.
Musa has also denied the allegation.
Still, Alharbi insists that “my opponent doesn’t even live in Hamtramck, a fact we are actively addressing through a legal case. The residents of Hamtramck deserve leadership that is locally invested, legally qualified, and fully committed to our community.”
In the meantime, Alharbi sought to get the city council to approve having the city pay for his legal fees that now total at least $200,000. Alharbi got his request approved with the support of only two councilmembers.
But a closer look at the vote revealed that there wasn’t a minimum number of councilmembers participating in it to qualify as a necessary quorum.
The vote was therefore ruled invalid.
No date for the counting of the 37 ballots in question has been set, but, according to sources, it could be as early as next week or the week after.
Posted Aug. 21, 2026