When Abu Musa discovered surveillance footage showing people stuffing ballots into drop boxes in Hamtramck, Michigan, he probably didn’t expect to see himself allegedly featured in the video.
The incumbent city councilman, who was running for reelection, appeared in footage that purportedly captured several individuals handling stacks of ballots and placing them into drop boxes throughout the city.
The videos paint a troubling picture. Video shows two men handling stacks of ballots before placing them into a Hamtramck drop box. Another captures a pickup truck arriving at the same location, with the driver getting out and shoving more stacks of ballots into the box. Under Michigan election law, only the voter, an immediate family member, or someone living in the voter’s home can legally deposit ballots.
Musa won his reelection with 1,129 votes. Of those, 843 came from absentee ballots. That means nearly 75 percent of his support arrived through the mail rather than at polling stations on election day.
Trump Taking on Mail-in Ballots Issue
This case emerged just as President Trump announced his intention to “get rid of mail-in ballots,” triggering predictable responses from media outlets and Democratic officials. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold appeared on CNN to declare that “mail ballots are secure.” MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace called Trump’s comments “completely false” and claimed there is “zero evidence” to support voter fraud concerns.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie dismissed Trump’s claims as being “without evidence” before acknowledging that fraud does occur, though she characterized it as “rare.” Self-described independent journalist Terry Moran went further, stating there is “zero proof” for Trump’s fraud claims and asserting that “there is no voter fraud of any consequence anywhere in the US.”
Yet the consequences keep mounting in communities across America. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, Democrat Mayor Joe Ganim was trailing challenger John Gomes by hundreds of votes during their September primary. Then absentee ballots flooded in, giving Ganim a 251-vote victory. Surveillance footage later surfaced appearing to show two of Ganim’s associates stuffing ballot boxes. A judge overturned the election and ordered a new primary, which was itself plagued by fresh allegations of voter fraud.
Affects All Levels of Government
The pattern extends beyond high-profile mayoral races. In Pennsylvania this summer, three members of the Millbourne Council Board received prison sentences for preparing fake ballots and stuffing drop boxes. Wisconsin saw hundreds of ballots allegedly stuffed into a drop box in October 2024, according to reporting by The Federalist’s Matt Kittle.
Down in Alabama, a Democratic candidate for county office faced seven felony counts of voter fraud after allegedly voting “for another voter or falsifying an absentee ballot application or verification document so as to vote absentee and/or willfully aided any person unlawfully to vote an absentee ballot.” Meanwhile, a Texas man received a four-year prison sentence for ballot fraud during the 2020 election after forging mail-in ballot applications using residents’ names and having the ballots sent to a Lewisville mail store where he maintained a virtual mailbox using fake identification.
These aren’t abstract policy debates or partisan talking points. They represent real people in real communities discovering that their votes were diluted or cancelled by fraudulent ballots. Each case involved the same vulnerable system: mail-in voting that operates outside the traditional safeguards of in-person polling.
Unique Vulnerability
What makes mail-in voting uniquely vulnerable is the absence of direct observation and immediate verification that characterizes in-person polling. Traditional polling stations provide multiple layers of security: voter identification, poll watchers from both parties, sealed ballot boxes, and immediate counting under public observation. Mail-in systems rely instead on chain-of-custody procedures that are difficult to monitor and easier to manipulate.
The documented cases from Hamtramck to Bridgeport to Texas all exploited these vulnerabilities. Whether through ballot harvesting, forgery, or outright stuffing of drop boxes, the perpetrators understood that mail-in systems offer more opportunities for fraud with less risk of immediate detection.
Granted, this reality doesn’t require eliminating absentee voting entirely. Military personnel deployed overseas and genuinely disabled citizens need alternatives to in-person voting. But it does suggest that broad expansions of mail-in voting without corresponding security measures create unnecessary risks to election integrity.
The goal isn’t to suppress votes but to ensure that every legitimate vote counts equally. When fraudulent ballots enter the system, they don’t just add illegitimate votes; they subtract value from every honest citizen’s participation. Abu Musa’s opponents in Hamtramck learned this lesson firsthand when nearly three-quarters of his winning margin arrived through a system that surveillance footage suggests was compromised.
Catholic Imperative to Protect Election Integrity
For Catholic conservatives who believe in both faith-informed citizenship and constitutional government, protecting election integrity represents a moral imperative wrapped in legal necessity. The documented cases of mail-in ballot fraud aren’t rare anomalies or partisan conspiracy theories. They’re concrete examples of what happens when convenience takes precedence over security in our most fundamental democratic process.
The question isn’t whether mail-in voting can be made more secure. The question is whether Americans will demand those improvements before more elections get decided by whoever proves most creative at gaming the system. The voters of Bridgeport, Hamtramck, Millbourne and communities across the country have already paid the price for treating election security as optional. The rest of us can learn from their experience or repeat their mistakes.
