In Pennsylvania, where officials swear elections are safe and secure, three elected officials are headed to prison after admitting they cheated in the 2021 election. Their cases reveal common vulnerabilities in the voting process that have yet to be cured.
The three men, who all at one time were elected Democrat members of the Millbourne Borough Council, tried to rig the mayoral election in favor of one of them. They failed by 30 votes, got caught, and in June each was sentenced to prison. Among the charges were conspiracy to commit voter fraud, giving false information in registering to vote, and fraudulent voter registration.
MD Nurul Hasan, 48, was sentenced to 36 months (3 years) prison. MD Munsur Ali, 48, was sentenced to 21 months in prison, one year of supervised release, and must pay $2,500. MD Rafikul Islam, 52, received 12 months and one day in prison, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The men all pleaded guilty on April 1. At that time, Hasan and Ali were sitting on the Millbourne Council Board. On May 13, Hasan resigned from the board, and the council appointed someone to fill out his term, ending Dec. 31, 2027.
Astonishingly, Ali has not yet resigned, Millbourne Borough Manager William Stewart confirmed to The Federalist. A felony conviction makes Ali ineligible to hold public office, but his seat will only be vacated if he resigns and the council accepts his resignation; or he is impeached by the District Attorney or Attorney General; or a judge rules in the favor of a petitioner who challenges the individual’s eligibility to hold office. His term ends Dec. 31, 2025.
“Ali can theoretically ‘ride-out’ his term in absentia unless one of the three previously mentioned actions is taken,” Stewart wrote in an email.
Millbourne, population 1,300, is part of the Philadelphia metro area, a mere .1 square mile—about eight blocks long.
As I previously reported, in the 2021 election, Ali won the Democrat primary in May and advanced to the November ballot. Islam lost in the primary, and Hasan narrowly lost his primary, 138-120.
Hasan decided to run a write-in campaign for mayor in the general election. Islam and Ali agreed to help. Using identification information from people living out of town, the men swapped voter registration addresses to Millbourne, using Pennsylvania’s online portal for voter registration.
They then electronically requested mail-in ballots, had them sent to mailboxes they could access, filled out the ballots, signed the outer envelope with the name of the bogus voter, and dropped them off at the Delaware County Board of Elections. In some cases, they took the ID information from people they did not know. They also asked non-residents to register to vote in Millbourne and cast mail-in ballots for Hasan to be mayor.
“Hasan and Ali persuaded many of their non-Millbourne friends and acquaintances to provide them with personal identification information so that defendants Hasan and Ali could register them to vote in Millbourne,” the DOJ statement said. “During many of these conversations, Hasan and Ali told their non-Millbourne friends and acquaintances that they would not get in trouble, as long as they did not vote in another election in November 2021.”
The scheme highlights how easily electronic voter registration and ballot requests, drop off boxes, signatures, photo identification, and in-person voting each have a role in allowing or preventing election fraud. If they had been forced to vote in person and verify their address with a photo ID, this cheating would not have happened.
“These defendants sabotaged the democratic will of their fellow citizens in deciding Millbourne’s next mayor,” said U.S. Attorney David Metcalf in a statement. “Public trust in the electoral process is critical, and my office is committed to ensuring that our elections remain free and fair. As this case shows, should we find instances of fraud, we won’t hesitate to prosecute those responsible.”