Candidates' faces on punching bags linked to 37 uncounted ballots in Hamtramck, 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.
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.
https://www.votebeat.org/michigan/2026/03/10/hamtramck-37-voters-disenfranchised-rana-faraj-adam-alharbi-muhith-mahmood/
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