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Amid a contested mayoral election marred by revelations of insecure ballots, the top election official in Hamtramck is suing several city officials, alleging they retaliated against her for trying to expose the city’s “ongoing election integrity issues.”
City Clerk Rana Faraj has been on leave since Nov. 10, days after 37 ballots cast in the 2025 municipal election were initially misplaced in her office. Faraj’s lawsuit alleges that she was put on leave as a way to satisfy city officials who had a grudge against her “after being falsely accused of meddling with the election.”
The lawsuit also provides more alleged details about the circumstances that led to the 37 ballots not being counted. The ballots may have been decisive in Hamtramck’s nonpartisan mayoral race, which was separated by only 11 votes after a recount last week.
Faraj’s suit, filed Monday in Wayne County, underscores the degree to which the relationship between city leadership and election officials has deteriorated in one of Michigan’s most prolifically troubled cities for voting. The suit names the city, its outgoing mayor, all six members of the city council, and the interim city manager as defendants.
Tensions flare between clerk and city officials
Allegations of unscrupulous actors and illegal tactics have plagued elections in Hamtramck for years. In the lawsuit, Faraj alleges that the campaign against her started after she attempted to report “serious violations of Michigan election law” in the city.
In March, Faraj wrote a letter to Attorney General Dana Nessel alleging repeated examples of election fraud in the city. In it, she wrote that an unnamed council member, who she later confirmed to reporters was Mohammed Hassan, had “a long, documented history of obstructing the election process.” That included undermining her work as clerk and intimidating election workers.
After that letter, Faraj says she started to feel bullied and harassed by Hassan’s colleagues on the City Council. The lawsuit alleges that council members told her, “we’re watching you,” and began tracking the hours she worked.
The suit goes on to say that, over the summer, Faraj was “repeatedly warned by multiple individuals, including a ranking member of city leadership, that the City Council was preparing to retaliate against her” for her letter to the attorney general. An unnamed council member told her the council was “trying to find something to hold against” Faraj, the lawsuit says.
But Amer Ghalib, the city’s outgoing mayor and one of the people named in the suit, told Votebeat the city had no problems with Faraj’s letter to Nessel. “When she reported some election issues to the AG office earlier this year, (the) city did not even give her a verbal warning for doing that,” he wrote in an email. “We considered that as part of her job and nothing was wrong with it, and no one took any action against her.”
The city did take action against Faraj, however, after last month’s mayoral election, in which 37 absentee ballots were mistakenly left in their envelopes and not counted on election night. The ballots were later found in Faraj’s office, she told the Wayne County Board of Canvassers last month, whereupon she immediately notified the necessary officials and delivered the ballots to the county.
However, after learning that non-election officials had accessed Faraj’s office while the ballots were there, the county canvassers did not include them in the final count amid concerns about their chain of custody.
According to Ghalib, Faraj was put on leave “due to multiple issues that took place in the clerk office” in the election, including mishandling the 37 ballots but also allegedly allowing unauthorized people — including a former city clerk and a former city attorney — in the office on Election Day.
Meanwhile, Faraj’s suit alleges those ballots were simply a pretense to put her on leave. She argues the city made it seem to the public that she was on leave for wrongdoing, whereas she was told it was for her “physical protection.”
In an interview Monday, Faraj’s attorneys, Jonathan Marko and Reno Arabo, told Votebeat that this was “yet another chapter of city dysfunction” in a community that has seen a lot.
Four members of the City Council, plus one incoming member just elected last month, were named in an April petition by Nessel for allegedly taking unvoted absentee ballots from newly naturalized citizens and filling them out themselves. Two council members, Hassan and Muhtasin Sadman, were charged in August, although felony charges were later dropped against Sadman after two subpoenaed witnesses didn’t show up to court. No others have been charged, although they may be in the future.
“I’ve never seen such a corrupt and dysfunctional governmental entity that continues to do things that defy belief,” Marko said.
For the time being, Faraj is still on leave from the clerk’s office. Ghalib said the city was prepared to welcome her back — until recently.
“The plan was to give her a warning and ask her to come back to work, but her attorney (sent) a request letter asking for $500,000 by the end of that day, or they will file a lawsuit,” he wrote in his email. “The city decided not to be exploited or blackmailed by anyone.”
Ghalib expressed confidence that Faraj’s lawsuit will not succeed. “We think our legal position is … strong in this case.” He did not provide evidence of the request letter, while Faraj’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment about it.
New revelations about the 37 uncounted ballots
Faraj’s lawsuit also sheds new light on the events that ultimately disenfranchised 37 absentee voters in last month’s election.
Faraj had said previously, and repeated in the lawsuit, that her staff had noticed a discrepancy on election night between the number of ballots tabulated and the number of ballots received; the 37 ballots later discovered in her office had somehow been separated from the others. The lawsuit offered a potential explanation for how this happened: “The issue apparently arose because workers had cut open these ballot envelopes but accidentally mixed them with the tray of emptied envelopes.”
The ballots remained unaccounted for until Nov. 7, when they were sealed and delivered to the county under police escort. Such issues “are common and occur regularly in Wayne County,” Faraj’s suit says, insisting she handled the discrepancy “professionally, transparently, and in accordance with all guidance from Wayne County officials.”
Tammy Patrick, chief program officer of the National Association of Election Officials, agreed that it’s not uncommon for election workers to misplace ballots, although steps can and should be taken to limit these occurrences. For instance, she said, states like California and Virginia have designed absentee ballot envelopes with a small hole in them that allows anyone to see whether a ballot is in the envelope without seeing the way they’ve voted.
“After (election workers) empty the envelope, they put a zip tie through it, so you know it’s empty, and put them in bundles,” Patrick said. This may help avoid a situation where the ballots get mixed in with empty envelopes.
When ballots are misplaced, though, it’s often a solvable problem. Such problems are usually quickly caught and fixed, Patrick said. But in Hamtramck, people walking into the clerk’s office changed the calculus.
Originally, Faraj and others said that Interim City Manager Alex Lagrou and two other city employees who were not election officials walked into the sealed clerk’s office on election night. But the lawsuit says five people — Lagrou, City Assessor Konrad Maziarz, and three other unnamed employees — walked in, and that they did so on the Wednesday night after the election.
It’s still unclear why city officials entered Faraj’s office, although the suit says it was for “non-election reasons.” The lawsuit also says Faraj had warned city officials for years that the physical setup of her office was insecure; the municipal mailroom is located inside her office, for instance. The only security measure the city agreed to was to install a keycard access lock on the clerk’s office, the suit alleges — but it “failed to enforce the keycard access restrictions during election season.”
Despite these security concerns, however, Faraj’s lawsuit also states that none of the five people who entered the office were aware that the ballots were there, and that “the 37 ballots … were never spoiled, altered, duplicated, or tampered with.” It is not clear how they arrived at that conclusion.
Patrick said it might have been possible for officials to conduct forensic testing on the ballots to see if they may have been tampered with — comparing ink colors, for example — but Lisa Capatina, the chair of the Board of Canvassers, argued during canvassing that an investigatory step like that would be outside the board’s powers.
Muhith Mahmood, the losing candidate in the mayoral race, has since sued to have the ballots considered. Judge Patricia Perez Fresard on Friday ordered the involved parties to talk to each other to try to reach a resolution.
“At this point, it’s good that it will go to a court to be adjudicated,” Patrick said. “They’re the best ones to determine how to treat those ballots.”
That case is set to come before the judge next Friday. It’s not clear when Faraj’s case will be considered. Court records indicate Judge Adel Harb has been assigned to the case.
Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.
