A Michigan city council member was caught on camera stuffing an election drop-box with apparent absentee ballots just days before he won his re-election bid in a local primary.
Hamtramck City Council member Abu Musa was seen in the passenger seat of a car on Aug. 1 handing stacks of paper to the car’s driver, who then dumped them into a nearby ballot box, footage obtained by Local 4 appears to show.
Musa held onto his re-election spot in the primary four days later on Aug. 5, beating out 11 other candidates with 1,129 votes.
But only 286 of those votes were cast on election day — with 843 being cast by absentee ballot, the Daily Mail reported.
Musa would have placed fifth without the absentee ballots, according to the Mail.
Footage of the ballot box dump emerged earlier in August just a day after two Hamtramck council members were arraigned on election fraud charges over a 2023 investigation.
That investigation was sparked after a city clerk noted absentee ballots were being dropped off in large bundles and filled out with suspiciously similar handwriting.
And while Musa was named in the investigation, he was not charged.
But, along with another member of the city council, he is at the center of an investigation into whether he’s actually a resident of Hamtramck — something required to hold his city council position.
He has denied those allegations, Local 4 reported.
The newly released footage of the ballot box stuffing was taken as a part of that investigation, Michigan State Police confirmed.
Local Michigan law has no limit to how many absentee ballots a single person can physically turn in on other voters’ behalf — but people can only submit another person’s absentee ballot if they are close relatives or live in their home.
“You can [turn in more than one ballot], but there’s a big caveat as to who, whose ballot you can return,” Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown told WXWZ.
“If it’s an immediate family member or you co-inhabit with somebody, it doesn’t have to be in a romantic way, but if you co-inhabit with someone, you can return their absentee ballots,” she added.
Musa did not respond to requests for comment on the footage.
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