After Michigan Supreme Court Rebuff, Hamtramck Braces to Recount 37 Ballots That Could Unseat Its Mayor

In Hamtramck, Michigan — the small Detroit-bordering city long known as one of the most Muslim and immigrant-dense communities in the country — a mayoral election that was supposedly settled in December 2025 is still not over. Adam Alharbi, a Yemeni American engineer for the federal government, was certified the winner of the city's November 2025 mayoral race over City Councilman Muhith Mahmood by just 11 votes, after a recount affirmed his win. But the closeness of the race was driven in large part by 37 absentee ballots that were never counted at all. Those ballots turned up in the city clerk's office the day after Election Day — opened, but never tabulated — after unauthorized individuals had gone into the sealed clerk's office on election night. Because that chain of custody was broken, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers deadlocked 2-2 along party lines and excluded the ballots entirely, effectively leaving 37 Hamtramck voters without a counted vote. Mahmood sued to have the ballots counted, arguing that voters should not be penalized for a mistake made by election administrators, not by them. A Wayne County judge initially sided against him, but in March 2026 the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed that decision in a 2-1 ruling, finding that excluding the ballots wrongly disenfranchised voters through no fault of their own. Alharbi and Wayne County officials asked the Michigan Supreme Court to intervene; on August 14, 2026, the state's highest court declined to hear the case, letting the Court of Appeals' order stand. That means the 37 ballots are now expected to be opened and counted — a process county officials said could happen within days of the ruling, though an exact date has not been made public. The stakes go beyond a single office. If the additional ballots swing the race, Mahmood would become Hamtramck's first mayor of Bangladeshi descent, in a city whose political leadership has been dominated in recent years by its large Yemeni American community, including outgoing Mayor Amer Ghalib. Local outlet the Hamtramck Review has noted that a shift from a Yemeni American mayor to a Bangladeshi American one could sharpen long-simmering tension between the city's two largest immigrant communities, both of which have grown rapidly and now anchor much of Hamtramck's civic and business life. Alharbi, who took office amid the unresolved dispute in January 2026, has used his time as mayor to publicly push for changes to how Wayne County and Hamtramck handle ballot custody and cured absentee ballots, saying the saga has eroded public confidence in local elections. He has also alleged, without providing evidence accepted by any court, that some ballots were altered during the original count — claims Mahmood's campaign has called an attempt to delegitimize a legitimate legal process. Mahmood, for his part, has said the outcome is not about political ideology but about ensuring that every legally cast ballot in his hometown is honored. Whatever the ballots show, the episode has already reshaped Hamtramck's civic life for nearly a year: it contributed to the ouster of the city clerk who first flagged the missing ballots, fueled repeated turnover in the city manager's office, and kept an elected government under a cloud of litigation for most of its first term. For a city that made history in 2021 by becoming the first in the United States to elect an all-Muslim city council, the outcome of a 37-ballot recount will determine not just who holds the mayor's office, but which immigrant community's rise gets to write the next chapter of Hamtramck's political story.