Hamtramck, Michigan, is finally close to knowing who its mayor is — nearly a year after residents voted. On Friday, October 30, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen M. McCarthy granted summary disposition in favour of mayor-elect Muhith Mahmood and dismissed the residency challenge brought by his opponent, Adam Alharbi, clearing the way for the election result to be certified, The Hamtramck Review reported.

Source: The Hamtramck Review

The fight is not completely over. FOX 2 Detroit reported on Saturday, October 31, that Alharbi, who has continued to serve as mayor while the courts decided the case, has filed an emergency appeal following the judge's decision. Mahmood is set to be officially seated as mayor once certification goes through, unless an appeal court intervenes.

Source: FOX 2 Detroit (WJBK)

The 37 ballots that flipped a mayor's race

The dispute goes back to the November 2025 mayoral election, when Alharbi was initially declared the winner by a razor-thin margin of 11 votes. The contest was thrown into turmoil almost immediately when the Hamtramck city clerk revealed that 37 uncounted absentee ballots had been left in limbo — they were discovered in the city clerk's office a day after the election, according to reporting on the case.

Mahmood launched appellate proceedings to force those ballots to be counted. After nearly a year of judicial delays, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers finally processed them on October 16, 2026. Of the 37 ballots, 29 went to Mahmood and six to Alharbi, according to Votebeat's account of the count, moving the totals to 2,089 votes for Mahmood and 2,077 for Alharbi — reversing the original outcome.

Source: Votebeat

The residency fight at the centre of the case

Anticipating Mahmood's election challenge, Alharbi had filed a pre-emptive lawsuit shortly after the 2025 election alleging — as an allegation, not a finding — that Mahmood was ineligible to hold office because he had claimed Hamtramck residency on his affidavit of candidacy while actually living with his family in Troy, Michigan.

Judge McCarthy held a full evidentiary hearing on October 22. Witnesses called by Alharbi included neighbours from Troy, Michigan State Police detectives and a private investigator formerly employed by the Hamtramck Police Department. The judge noted that the evidence presented was, in her words, “scant, at best,” and relied heavily on subjective assumptions such as water-usage metrics, home furnishings and cell-tower “sleep hours.”

Mahmood testified that while his wife and children reside in Troy, he moved to Hamtramck in 2019 when he was elected to the city council and has maintained a residence there ever since, sleeping in the city four to five nights a week around his work schedule at MGM Grand Detroit. Hamtramck neighbours corroborated his testimony, describing his home and his frequent presence in the community.

Why the case also failed on procedure

In her 14-page opinion, McCarthy also dismantled the suit on procedural grounds. The challenge was brought as an action in quo warranto — the legal proceeding used to contest a person's right to hold public office. Under Michigan Court Rule 3.306, such actions involving a public corporation like the City of Hamtramck must be initiated by the attorney general, or pursued privately only after the attorney general formally refuses to act. “At the time this action was filed, Mahmood was neither an elected official nor the mayor-elect. … Alharbi's action in quo warranto warrants dismissal on that procedural basis alone,” the judge wrote, adding that Alharbi had improperly bypassed the state's top law-enforcement office. The court nevertheless held the October 22 hearing to bring finality for Hamtramck's voters.

The opinion closed with a stern rebuke of the political acrimony that has gripped the 2.2-square-mile city for the past 18 months. Noting the intensity of the litigation over an office that pays just $6,500 a year, McCarthy quoted former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi — “Peace is difficult to obtain with clenched fists” — and wrote: “For the sake of its residents, the fighting needs to stop so that Hamtramck can heal and move forward.”

The cost of the fight, and what happens next

The legal battle has also cost the small city real money. A bare majority of councilmembers had agreed to have the city pay Alharbi's personal legal bills for fighting the ballot count; the bill was expected to reach $200,000, and the city had already paid $134,000, according to invoices The Hamtramck Review obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. That money is being held in an escrow account because of a legal challenge by Councilmember Mohammed Alsomiri. Alharbi has argued the city should pay because he was officially mayor when the challenge began; Mahmood's side notes the ballot litigation started before Alharbi was sworn in.

What happens next turns on certification and the emergency appeal. The judge's order directs the county to certify the ballots, and earlier reporting in the case indicated the earliest Mahmood could take office was November 4, when the county certifies the results of the upcoming November 3 elections along with the Hamtramck 2025 results. Under Michigan election law, a recount cannot be requested until certification is complete, Votebeat noted — so certification is the step that unlocks every remaining legal move, including any recount request and the effect of Alharbi's emergency appeal.

For Hamtramck's roughly 28,000 residents, the ruling ends — subject to the appeal — a year in which a mayoral election stayed unsettled through courtrooms instead of the ballot box. The city's governance was, in The Review's words, paralysed by the feud, and the case became a statewide example of how 37 mishandled absentee ballots can leave a whole city without a settled leader for almost a year.