Circuit court judge will once again consider election challenge

City Councilmember Muhith Mahmood is hoping a Wayne County Circuit Court judge will allow 37 uncounted absentee ballots to be included in the final vote tally. He lost his bid to become mayor by 11 votes.

By Charles Sercombe
Hamtramck might come one step closer to finding out who will serve as its mayor, starting on Jan. 1.
Or maybe not.
City Councilmember Muhith Mahmood, who ran for the job of mayor instead for another term on council, is seeking to have 37 uncounted absentee ballots included in the final vote tally.
The ballots in question were discovered in the city clerk’s office a day or two after the election was over, but the Wayne County Board of Canvassers deadlocked in a 2-2 vote on whether to allow the ballots to be counted.
That tie vote, by law, automatically prevented the ballots from being counted.
That’s where Mahmood took up the matter to include the ballots. And there is a lot at stake: Mahmood lost the election by a mere 11 votes.
If those 37 ballots are allowed to be counted, the final tally could make Mahmood the winner of the mayoral election.
Current mayor-elect Adam Alharbi is arguing not to have the ballots counted because they were left unsecured and could have been tampered with.
Mahmood counter-argues that not counting the ballots disenfranchises those voters.
This issue is what Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Patricia Perez Fresard has to decide on. Last Friday, she agreed to allow the attorneys involved in the case another week to file more legal arguments.
The matter is scheduled to be heard once again today, Friday, Dec. 19, at about 9 a.m. The public can watch the court proceedings via a Zoom meeting.
The link can be found online on the Wayne County Circuit Court’s webpage, under the judge’s name.
Even if the judge allows the 37 ballots to be counted, at Tuesday’s city council meeting, the council agreed not to accept any election results that include those 37 ballots.
Councilmember Khalil Refai cautioned against that, however, saying “Wayne County is bigger” – meaning, Hamtramck has no authority to disregard the election results handed down by Wayne County.
City Attorney Odey Meroueh also said the city has to accept Wayne County’s election results.
If it turns out that the ballots are counted and Mahmood wins, Alharbi is challenging is eligibility to hold office in Hamtramck.
Alharbi contends that Mahmood is not a resident of the city, but instead lives in Troy with his family.
He’s basing this on a prior internal investigation conducted by an outside company which reported that Mahmood is actually a resident of Troy, which also says that Councilmember Abu Musa actually lives in Warren with his family.
Both Mahmood and Musa deny the allegations.
Judge Fresard said she will also hear the matter about Mahmood’s residency status.

Update: The issue of whether to count 37 ballots that are in dispute was postponed until next Tuesday, Dec. 23,at 9 a.m. The link to see the court proceeding online is: https://www.3rdcc.org/zoom/civil
Posted Dec. 19, 2025