A failed conspiracy to steal a mayoral race exhibits how manipulation can occur on the native degree, and the way troublesome it might be to orchestrate fraud on a bigger scale.
By Carter Walker, Votebeat
In October 2021, shortly earlier than Election Day, Mahabubul Tayub was reviewing the voter rolls for the tiny Philadelphia suburb of Millbourne, the place he was on the poll as a candidate for mayor. One thing didn’t appear proper.
Dozens of latest voters had been registered in current weeks, he observed, together with some individuals he knew — individuals who didn’t reside in Millbourne.
Tayub received the mayoral election that November, however it might take years for authorities to completely unravel what was behind the odd registrations he found: a brazen try at election fraud.
Simply final month, his opponent within the 2021 race, Md Nurul Hasan, pleaded responsible in federal court docket to 33 felony fees in a failed scheme to steal the election by illegally registering dozens of nonresidents as Millbourne voters, then casting mail ballots on their behalf. Two associates additionally pleaded responsible to a number of fees, together with fraudulent voter registration.
The case serves as a actuality examine amid a raging nationwide debate over election safety and the specter of voter fraud, particularly in swing states like Pennsylvania. It’s proof, on one hand, that regardless of the numerous safeguards in place, voter fraud can occur on the native degree, with lasting penalties for the group. However, it additionally helps illustrate how troublesome it might be to orchestrate such fraud on a bigger scale with out detection.
“It seems to be in the local races this pops up the most, where there is a smaller turnout and there is possibly a direct connection between the person committing the bad act and the person who is going to benefit from the bad act,” stated Jim Allen, the Delaware County elections director.
It’s in these small jurisdictions, he stated, that “the temptation is highest and the risk-reward is highest.”
Two immigrants grew to become pals, then opponents
Millbourne is a tiny borough on the japanese fringe of Delaware County, bordering Philadelphia. It covers lower than 50 acres — not even a tenth of a sq. mile — and has roughly 1,200 residents.
The land was initially the homestead of the Sellers household, immigrants from Derbyshire, England. Within the mid 1700s, John Sellers opened Millbourne Mills, a flour mill that drew its title from close by Mill Creek, now Cobb’s Creek — the dividing line between Delaware County and Philadelphia.
As small as it’s, the borough has seen enormous demographic modifications in current a long time. In 1980, it was greater than 90% white, in keeping with the U.S. Census Bureau, however by 2020, it was majority Asian. That was pushed by immigration from South Asia, together with India and Bangladesh.
Now, Market Road, the principle thoroughfare by means of Millbourne, is dotted with South Asian grocery shops and boutiques promoting Indian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani clothes. In 2023, Sellers Avenue — a brief, principally residential avenue named after the founding household — was given a second title: Bangladesh Avenue, a change that the native Bangladeshi group celebrated as a testomony to their rising financial and political energy.
Tayub, 47, grew up in Chittagong, a port metropolis in southeast Bangladesh. He graduated from college there with a level in economics, and moved to Philadelphia, then Millbourne within the early 2000s. Hasan, 48, can be from Chittagong, and Tayub stated the 2 had grow to be pleasant when he and Hasan lived in the identical Philadelphia constructing.
“All the friends [who were] the same age, all the people from Bangladesh” socialized collectively, Tayub recalled.
Tayub additionally received to know former Millbourne Mayor Tom Kramer, a Democrat who later inspired him to run for the five-member borough council. Tayub and Hasan each launched bids as Democrats and received within the 2015 municipal election, Tayub stated. (Each Tayub and Hasan are U.S. residents.)
Within the spring of 2021, Kramer determined towards operating for an additional time period as mayor. Tayub entered the race, with Kramer’s help. Hasan jumped in, too.
The city’s voters skewed closely Democratic, which meant whoever received the social gathering main was prone to coast to victory within the fall. And whether or not it was Hasan or Tayub, the winner was poised to grow to be the primary Bangladesh-born mayor of a U.S. city, a prospect that obtained media consideration in Bangladesh.
Tayub stated he wasn’t frightened concerning the competitors. “I have faith people know me,” he stated.
Tayub received the first by 18 votes out of 258 forged. However Hasan launched a write-in marketing campaign for the November common election with the help of two different council members: Md Munsur Ali and Md Rafikul Islam, who misplaced his main bid for reelection to the council. (Md is an abbreviation for Muhammad, and a typical prefix for Bangladeshi names.)
How the plot unfolded
In response to the federal indictment that laid out the lads’s try to steal the election, the three conspired to acquire private data from non-Millbourne residents — primarily pals of Hasan’s and Ali’s. Hasan then registered them to vote in Millbourne utilizing the Division of State’s web site, the indictment stated — in some circumstances updating present registrations by altering them to Millbourne addresses — and requested mail-in ballots on their behalf.
The indictment stated Hasan and Ali advised the residents of close by communities, together with Higher Darby and Philadelphia, that they might not get in hassle, as long as they “did not vote in another election in November 2021.”
The indictment described an effort to “cover up the fact that defendant HASAN was requesting mail-in ballots for dozens of different people,” by which Hasan alternated electronic mail addresses when registering the voters, in addition to the addresses, and requested that the mail ballots be despatched to varied places.
In response to the indictment, after receiving the ballots, Hasan and the others wrote in Hasan’s title for mayor and forged the ballots. In all, the indictment says, Hasan and his co-conspirators fraudulently registered almost three dozen individuals.
The indictment doesn’t establish the voters who had been registered improperly, however one of many individuals whom Hasan registered confirmed his involvement and agreed to talk with Votebeat and Highlight PA on situation of anonymity, out of concern that their involvement within the scheme may jeopardize their present employment.
The voter confirmed giving Hasan their driver’s license and permitting Hasan to proceed with the Millbourne registration and request a mail poll for them.
“I trusted him and thought if I only give one vote, it’s not a problem,” stated the individual. “He made us fools.”
Suspicion forward of Election Day: ‘I know these people.’
The votes hadn’t even been counted when Millbourne residents started to catch on to the scheme. In response to the indictment, the borough added 29 voters between the first and the November election. On condition that Millbourne had fewer than 600 voters, it was a noticeable soar.
After Tayub grew suspicious of the brand new voter registrations, he introduced his considerations to Kramer, the departing mayor, although neither man remembers precisely when.
“I know these people, they never live [in] Millbourne,” Tayub recalled considering when he noticed some newly registered names. “They live [in] Upper Darby.” Tayub’s lawyer filed a criticism with the county elections workplace on Oct. 28, 2021. Tayub and Kramer stated in addition they reported the matter to legislation enforcement across the time of the election. The district lawyer’s workplace didn’t reply to a query about when and the way they grew to become conscious of the matter.
Allen, the county elections director, stated in an electronic mail that Hasan himself had questioned some voter registrations months earlier, in April, and his workplace had referred that matter to the district lawyer. Allen wrote that within the months and years after Tayub’s complaints, “we received and responded to periodic inquiries from investigators.”
However Tayub and others in Millbourne stated they grew annoyed as a result of though the county was taking steps to look into the scenario, for almost a 12 months afterward, they didn’t observe a lot progress.
“I couldn’t take it,” Tayub stated throughout a current interview with Votebeat and Highlight PA.
Tayub, Kramer, and the borough’s secretary, Nancy Baulis, all met with an assistant district lawyer earlier than the Might 2022 main to debate the standing of the case, and Baulis and Kramer adopted up with emails to county officers, together with the district lawyer, a couple of months later expressing frustration concerning the obvious lack of motion.
Kramer shared these emails with Votebeat and Highlight PA. In his, he wrote that the assistant district lawyer on the assembly had stated that “this particular situation was very problematic politically,” and would generate media curiosity.
In an interview, Kramer stated after sending that electronic mail, he reached out to the FBI. He stated the investigation appeared to select up after that.
The federal indictment got here in February 2025.
The county individually charged Hasan with illegal voting and associated fees in March, and the case is pending. Due to that, District Lawyer Jack Stollsteimer stated he couldn’t talk about the matter, however stated in an electronic mail that it’s “inaccurate” to say that the county didn’t transfer shortly on the case earlier than the FBI’s involvement.
Neither the district lawyer’s workplace nor the assistant district lawyer Kramer talked about in his electronic mail responded to a request for touch upon what Kramer stated he was advised on the Might 2022 assembly.
The Pennsylvania Division of State stated it “first became aware of the fraud allegations when it was contacted by federal law enforcement.”
“I don’t have any comment beyond stating the obvious, that there has been a prosecution,” Allen, the county election director, stated. “It was a very difficult matter to investigate because you can’t make assumptions [based on] ‘Well, this house looks empty.’ Well, was it empty last fall? How do you know it’s empty? Did someone move out?”
Requested after an April borough council assembly if he had any clarification or remark, Hasan declined. “I don’t want to say anything now,” Hasan stated.
Hasan’s lawyer, Michael Dugan, stated his consumer had no remark in response to a listing of questions concerning the scheme. Islam, Ali, and their respective attorneys didn’t reply to emails with detailed questions for this story.
The fact of election fraud vs. false claims
Instances like Millbourne’s muddy the intensifying nationwide debate over election fraud: how widespread it’s, what to do about it, and, extra essentially, whether or not our election system will be trusted.
In recent times, an ecosystem of conspiracy theories about election manipulation has flourished on-line. Justin Grimmer, a political scientist at Stanford College, has researched the form of broad claims of systematic election fraud that President Donald Trump and his allies made after the 2020 election to clarify his loss, and stated he has discovered no proof of any such conspiracy.
However Grimmer’s analysis has turned up actual situations of fraud, and so they sometimes appear to be what occurred in Millbourne — an area race, involving a comparatively small variety of votes.
“I think it gives some insight into why it would be very hard to do this in a broad national way,” he stated. “This sort of fraud will leave lots of markers that people will end up discovering.”
The form of “marker” Grimmer is referencing is the proof Tayub was in a position to cite: precise names and addresses for the individuals who had been drawn into the scheme.
Scaling a scheme just like the one in Millbourne to 1 that includes sufficient votes to swing a statewide or nationwide election can be arduous, Grimmer stated, as a result of it might contain so many individuals.
The perpetrators right here had entry to driver’s license numbers, which in keeping with the indictment they received immediately from the voters. Allen, the county election director, stated he was unaware of every other fraud case the place voters gave out their private data like this.
Stephanie Singer, a former Philadelphia metropolis commissioner who was in workplace in 2016 when a poll field stuffing scheme orchestrated by a former congressman was taking place, has developed an algorithm that appears for anomalies in election leads to the hopes of catching tried fraud. Georgia is at the moment utilizing this system to observe its elections.
“Part of the job, not just of the board of elections, but of us as a democratic populace, is to guard against that,” she stated. “The people who win the elections have access to money and power, and that means it’s really tempting to cheat.”
These makes an attempt to cheat, even when they’re initially profitable at altering the outcomes, are steadily caught, and election officers uphold these circumstances as examples of the safeguards working. Even so, the actual fact that they happen may also help destroy belief in elections.
Incidents like these in Millbourne and in a 2018 North Carolina congressional race that required a brand new election can function a “proof of concept” for these already suspicious that election fraud is occurring, Grimmer stated.
He recalled a county elections assembly in Oregon the place he was attempting to counter factors made by a speaker who believed there was a broad conspiracy to steal elections, and cited an area incident from California for instance.
“In that setting, I can explain that it’s very different than the kind of conspiracy he’s alleging,” he stated. “But if someone’s suspicious, all of a sudden it does reveal that it is possible to do this at least on a small scale.”
“If I’m not sufficiently persuasive in that meeting that it’s hard to scale this up,” he added, “you could see how this can further undermine trust” in election administration.
In Millbourne, the story isn’t over
Practically 4 years after the election fraud, and a month after the responsible pleas, a tense temper nonetheless hung over Millbourne’s five-member borough council.
Two members resigned not too long ago for causes unrelated to the fraud case, which till not too long ago left solely three members, together with Hasan and Ali. Regardless of their convictions, the lads refused to right away resign, and weren’t legally required to take action. Sentencing is scheduled for June.
By staying in workplace, Hasan and Ali allowed the borough to maintain conducting council enterprise. With out them, the council wouldn’t have had sufficient members.
However current council conferences had been marked by fraught exchanges over the matter.
The borough council constructing is a good area. A sliding partition and help pillar break up the room between attendees and the U-shaped association of folding tables the place council members sit.
At an April 15 assembly, Kramer, the previous mayor, stepped in entrance of the pillar when it was his flip to supply public remark.
“I’d like to address our felonious council people,” Kramer stated, going through Hasan and Ali. “I wanted to ask if either one of you had any intention of resigning.”
The eyes of the opposite borough officers shifted to Hasan to see how he would reply.
Hasan, carrying a purple button-down shirt and grey jacket, regarded uncomfortable as he answered, shifting his ft and looking out across the room or down at his papers.
“Actually the court has a restriction,” he stated. “I don’t want to say anything.”
However on Might 13, borough officers confirmed that Hasan had formally submitted his resignation, although the council has but to just accept it.
As of Tuesday, Ali had not resigned.
Getting a public official out of elected workplace — exterior of defeating them on the poll field — shouldn’t be easy, even when the official has pleaded responsible to a felony.
“It’s not just automatic,” James Gallagher, the borough’s solicitor, defined at an April assembly. He stated Hasan and Ali’s resignations can be “in the best interest of the borough.”
The state Legislature can impeach native elected officers, however hardly ever makes use of that energy. The opposite possibility is a quo warranto motion, a authorized motion difficult a public official’s proper to carry workplace, sometimes introduced by the district lawyer or state lawyer common.
Chris Cosfol, a resident of Millbourne, stated he desires the district lawyer’s workplace to convey such an motion. The ordeal has been “embarrassing” for the borough, he stated, and he thinks the members ought to have routinely been faraway from workplace as soon as they entered a responsible plea.
Neither the district lawyer’s workplace nor the lawyer common has but taken such motion.
