Ballot custody questions complicate aftermath of Hamtramck election
Sometime in the hours after last week’s election in Hamtramck, officials who weren’t involved in elections walked into the city clerk’s office, a space that’s supposed to be a secure place to keep ballots.
That revelation has thrown the outcome of the Michigan city’s entire election into doubt, including an exceedingly close mayoral race.
A total of 37 absentee ballots were initially unaccounted for on election night but were later discovered in the clerk’s office, opened but not yet tabulated. But since those ballots were not secured and could have been accessed by others, it’s currently up in the air whether they will be included in the election’s final totals.
The fate of the 37 ballots now rests with the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, which deadlocked on the decision Thursday and put off a resolution until Friday. City officials’ breach of the ballots’ chain of custody — a core safeguard in election law — has cast new doubt on the city’s election system, which is already under scrutiny amid ongoing criminal investigations and unusually high numbers of corrected absentee ballots.
https://www.votebeat.org/michigan/2025/11/14/hamtramck-election-uncounted-absentee-ballots-wayne-county-canvassers/