Hamtramck, Michigan, has a new mayor — and the video from his swearing-in is already raising some very serious eyebrows.

Muhith Mahmood took the oath Sunday after an election fight that dragged on for nearly a year. His delivery was halting, with multiple words in the oath visibly giving him trouble as the official administering it guided him through.

Watch the clip for yourself:

Forty seconds does not settle every question about a person’s command of English. It does show Mahmood struggling through the most formal words of his first day as mayor.

And the way he got there is every bit as unusual.

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WXYZ Detroit reports that Mahmood originally lost the November 2025 mayoral race to Adam Alharbi by 11 votes. The day after the election, 37 absentee-ballot envelopes were found in the city clerk’s office, setting off months of litigation over whether those votes could be counted.

Two ballots were ultimately disqualified. Of the 35 that were counted, 30 went to Mahmood, turning his 11-vote loss into a 12-vote victory.

The updated result was certified last Wednesday at 2,089 votes for Mahmood and 2,077 for Alharbi. That certification displaced a mayor who had already been serving since January.

The local station confirms that Mahmood was sworn in Sunday afternoon and is set to move into the mayor’s office Monday. Alharbi’s attorney says the fight will continue through appeals over both the residency decision and the ballot count.

The dispute did not begin with the final tally alone.

In its March decision, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the lower court and ruled that election officials could not discard the 37 ballots because of the handling irregularity. The court said Michigan law provided a process for treating the ballots as challenged and determining whether they should count.

That ruling did not declare every ballot valid on sight. It required the legal process to continue instead of denying all 37 voters because election officials had failed to tabulate their ballots.

The opinion records that the clerk found the opened envelopes after noticing a mismatch between absentee ballots returned and ballots counted. It also left room for individual ballots to be challenged through the procedures already written into Michigan law.

A separate fight centered on whether Mahmood actually met Hamtramck’s residency requirement.

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ClickOnDetroit reported that Wayne County Circuit Judge Kathleen McCarthy ruled on October 30 that the evidence did not disprove Mahmood’s residency claim. The dispute had held up certification even after the new vote count put Mahmood ahead.

McCarthy found that Mahmood met Hamtramck’s residency requirement after hearing witnesses and reviewing documentary evidence. Her ruling acknowledged that Mahmood owns other residences and that his wife and children primarily live in Troy, but concluded those facts did not bar him from holding office in Hamtramck.

The ruling cleared the canvassers to certify the updated result. Alharbi had been serving as mayor since January while the ballot and residency cases moved through court.

That decision removed the immediate legal obstacle to certification. But it did not end the political war.

Alharbi’s attorney, Nabih Ayad, told WXYZ after Sunday’s ceremony that the legal team plans to appeal both the residency issue and the ballot recount. No dates had been set.

The ceremony itself quickly became part of the national conversation, including the crowd gathered to celebrate Mahmood’s inauguration:

Hamtramck now has a certified and sworn-in mayor. It also has an unresolved legal challenge, a bitter fight over how the winning ballots were handled, and a swearing-in video the country will be talking about for a long time.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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