Two weeks after two Millbourne officials pleaded guilty to federal charges in a brazen scheme to steal a 2021 mayoral election, they are still sitting on the tiny Delaware County borough’s council and are poised to vote to appoint new members to the board.
On April 1, Md Nural Hasan, the vice president of the Millbourne Borough Council, and Md Munsur Ali, a council member, admitted to several felony election fraud charges for conspiring to register nonresidents to vote in Millbourne and cast ballots for Hasan on their behalf.
Hasan faces separate charges in state court, and a third coconspirator, Md Rafikul Islam, also pleaded guilty earlier this month. They are scheduled to be sentenced in June and face the possibility of years in prison.
Under state law, Ali and Hasan are ineligible to hold office as convicted felons. But the law does not mandate they immediately vacate their seats. Confronted by residents at a council meeting Tuesday night, Hasan and Ali said they did not yet plan to resign.
The two men’s convictions coincided with the resignation of two other members of the five-person council — placing the borough on the edge of a potential crisis where the council may be reduced to a single member.
Township Secretary Nancy Baulis said one council member, Md Mosharraff Hossain, submitted a letter of resignation on March 18. Council President Alauddin Patwary, Baulis said, handed in a handwritten resignation letter on April 7 after a contentious council meeting. Both men were accused of living outside the borough, making them ineligible to hold office.
The remaining council members refused to accept Patwary’s resignation Tuesday. If his colleagues do not accept the resignation, it will automatically take effect after 45 days.
The dual resignations threaten to leave just three members on Millbourne’s council — Hasan, Ali, and Salauddin Miah — the legal minimum for the body to conduct any business, including appointing Patwary and Hossain’s replacements. Advertisement
As a result, Hasan told reporters Tuesday, he will not decide on whether to resign until after the council has voted to fill the vacant seats.
“We can vote, then we can decide,” Hasan said.
The case against Hasan, Ali and Islam laid out an “exceedingly rare” voter fraud scheme that risked swaying the results of a local election in a small town with low turnout. The men used personal identifying information, like Social Security numbers, to change addresses for registered voters in Pennsylvania’s online voter registration system. Sometimes the changes were made with the knowledge and consent of these voters; other times, that was not the case.
After changing the addresses, they would request mail ballots on behalf of these voters and return them in the November 2021 general election with Hasan’s name written in for mayor. In total, prosecutors said, the men submitted about three dozen fraudulent ballots. Despite the effort, Hasan lost to current Mayor Mahabubul A. Tayub by about 30 votes.