On August 1, surveillance footage captured Abu Musa, a city councilman in Hamtramck, Michigan, sitting in the passenger seat of a car as another man stuffed three thick bundles of what appear to be absentee ballots into a drop box. Police confirmed the video is authentic.
Just days later, Musa won his August 5 primary election with more than 1,100 votes – nearly 75 percent of which came from absentee ballots.
Disturbing video shows lawmaker ‘stuffing migrants’ ballots’ in swing state that Trump only won by 80,000 votes https://t.co/UrnidPAg1I
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) August 17, 2025
This wasn’t the first time Hamtramck’s elections were clouded by suspicion.
Earlier this year, two of Musa’s fellow council members, Muhtasin Sadman and Mohammed Hassan, were charged with forging ballots in the city’s 2023 elections.
According to court documents, officials said they schemed to collect unvoted absentee ballots from recently naturalized citizens and then filled them out for the candidates of their choice.
Even though Musa’s name came up in those earlier investigations, he wasn’t charged at the time. Now, the video showing him alongside another man dropping stacks of ballots has brought his role back into the spotlight.
Swing States Decide Elections
Hamtramck is a small town of about 28,000 people outside Detroit, but the scandal has national importance.
Donald Trump won Michigan in 2024 by only about 80,000 votes. That’s a narrow margin in a state with 15 electoral votes – enough to swing the White House.
When stories like this surface, people start asking whether every legal vote really counts the same.
That’s a question Nevadans know all too well. In 2020, Clark County had more than 139,000 ballots cast by mail, and even though officials insist their system is secure, public confidence has dropped.
In Nevada, where elections are often decided by razor-thin margins, ballot integrity is critical.
In 2022, Republican Adam Laxalt lost his Senate race to Catherine Cortez Masto by just 7,928 votes. That’s less than the number of ballots found in one Las Vegas district.
The Politics Behind the Investigation
The Michigan Attorney General, Dana Nessel, has stepped away from the Hamtramck investigation. She argued that because most of the defendants are of Arab descent, she would be accused of bias no matter what she did.
And it probably doesn’t help that Nessel has been accused of playing politics before.
She clashed with Hamtramck’s Muslim-majority city council after they voted to ban Pride flags on city property. She also faced backlash for prosecuting pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan after the Hamas attack on Israel last October.
Nevada Needs Stronger Voting Safeguards
This scandal isn’t just about one small city in Michigan.
It’s a warning about what can happen when absentee ballots and drop boxes aren’t tightly controlled.
Nevada has one of the most relaxed voting systems in the country. Every registered voter automatically gets a mail ballot, whether they want one or not. Ballot harvesting (where someone turns in ballots for others) is legal here.
That might sound convenient, but convenience comes at a cost. Just ask Hamtramck.
When election officials there started noticing bundles of ballots with the same handwriting, it didn’t restore trust; it destroyed it.
Free Elections Require Fair Elections
Free and fair elections are the foundation of our republic. When ballot stuffing happens in places like Michigan, it doesn’t just hurt voters there – it shakes confidence everywhere.
Nevadans should be asking: if it can happen in Hamtramck, what’s stopping it from happening here?
If we want to keep faith in our elections, it’s time for lawmakers in Carson City to put voters first by strengthening safeguards, tightening rules on mail ballots, and making sure every Nevadan can trust that their one vote truly counts.
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views. This article was written with the assistance of AI. Please verify information and consult additional sources as needed.
