When Hamtramck officials announced they were searching for a new city clerk after firing Rana Faraj, the explanation offered to the public seemed straightforward. City officials suggested the termination stemmed from the controversy surrounding the 2025 election and a series of alleged workplace issues. But a closer look at the timeline — including the city’s own termination letter and a lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court — raises a more troubling question:

Did the city follow the law when it removed its chief election official?

And if not, why not?

The law governing closed-door deliberations

Michigan’s Open Meetings Act exists for a simple reason: public officials cannot conduct the public’s business behind closed doors unless strict procedures are followed.  Before a public body can move into closed session to discuss personnel matters, the law requires a formal vote in an open meeting.  Just as important, the employee whose discipline or dismissal is being discussed must receive notice and must be given the opportunity to demand that the discussion occur publicly.

Those requirements are not technicalities. They are safeguards designed to prevent exactly the kind of quiet, behind-the-scenes decision-making that erodes public trust.

Whether Hamtramck followed those requirements remains unclear.

The public record shows no clear indication that the City Council provided the clerk with advance notice of the specific charges being considered or that a proper public vote occurred before deliberations moved behind closed doors. Faraj’s lawsuit alleges that she was effectively removed from her position without meaningful notice or an opportunity to respond.

If that allegation proves correct, the question becomes unavoidable: was the decision to remove the city’s election official made outside the procedures Michigan law requires?

A review of the Hamtramck City Council’s publicly posted meeting materials raises additional questions about the process used to remove the city’s clerk. The termination correspondence states that the Council discussed the matter in connection with a January 27 Council meeting, yet the publicly available BoardDocs schedule lists that date only as a regular meeting, not a specially noticed closed session. In the minutes and agenda materials posted on the city’s website, there is no clear indication that the Council publicly voted to enter closed session to discuss the clerk’s employment, nor any recorded open-session vote reflecting a termination decision after returning from such a session. Michigan’s Open Meetings Act requires both steps — a roll-call vote in open session to enter closed session and any final decision to be made publicly — to be reflected in the official minutes. The absence of those entries in the city’s posted records does not conclusively prove they never occurred, but it does leave the public record incomplete on a point the law treats as central to government transparency: when and how the decision to fire the city’s chief election official was actually made.

A whistleblower in the middle of an election dispute

The timing of the city’s actions adds another layer to the controversy.

According to the lawsuit, Faraj had reported concerns about ballot harvesting, residency violations and other election-law issues to state authorities, including the Michigan attorney general and secretary of state. Those reports led to criminal charges against two individuals connected to election activity, including a sitting City Council member who will stand trial next month on felony charges.  Earlier charges against another councilmember resulted in a guilty plea.

Faraj’s complaint further alleges that the officials pushing for her removal were among those implicated in the election violations she had reported. In other words, the clerk who raised concerns about election misconduct soon found herself under investigation by the very officials whose conduct she had reported. A court will eventually have to determine whether her termination came as a result of retaliation or to intimidate her from testifying at the upcoming trial of Councilman Mohammed Hassan, who voted to terminate Faraj’s employment.

The 37 ballots

The public narrative surrounding Faraj’s removal has focused heavily on the discovery of 37 absentee ballots after the November 2025 election. But the sequence of events described in court filings complicates that story. In any event, nothing in the city’s termination letters references any wrongdoing connected to the late discovered ballots.

According to the lawsuit, when the ballots were discovered during routine records-retention preparation two days after the election, Faraj immediately documented the discovery, notified the Wayne County Clerk’s office, sealed the ballots and delivered them to county officials within 30 minutes under police escort. The Board of Canvassers ultimately decided not to count those ballots because the city manager, along with two other employees, improperly accessed the clerk’s office after it was closed. None of those employees has been disciplined.

Those actions were taken by the person now accused of mishandling the election.

Structural problems the clerk did not control

Another detail in the complaint raises questions about responsibility for the ballot issue. The municipal mailroom — where absentee ballots arrive — is physically located inside the clerk’s office. Faraj had warned city leadership about the security problems created by that design years earlier, according to the lawsuit.

According to her lawsuit, she had no authority to redesign the building, construct secure ballot storage areas or allocate capital funds to address the problem. The only security measure eventually installed was a keycard lock on the common door to clerk’s office and mailroom.

The termination letter

The city’s termination letter provides perhaps the most revealing detail. The only reason cited for Faraj’s removal, according to her attorneys, was her alleged failure to discipline a city employee because he placed the image of a candidate on a miniature punching bag in an area of the clerk’s office inaccessible to the public.

The problem with that explanation is straightforward: under the city charter and municipal personnel policies, the clerk does not have authority to discipline that employee.  The employee in question, the lawsuit notes, has not been disciplined by the city to this day.

That detail turns the termination letter into something unexpected.  Instead of clarifying the city’s justification, it raises a new question: why was the clerk blamed for failing to take an action she had no legal authority to take and which still has not, in fact, taken since her departure several months ago.

Warnings of retaliation

Faraj’s complaint also describes warnings she allegedly received after raising election concerns.  One Council member told her that members of the Council were “watching” her and were trying to find something they could “hold against” her because they believed she had authored a letter to the attorney general.

Soon afterward, she was placed on administrative leave.

The timing of the termination

Another element of the timeline has received far less attention but may prove equally significant.  According to documents reviewed in connection with the lawsuit, Faraj formally requested leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act due to her pregnancy. The termination decision came the following day.

Federal law prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for requesting protected medical leave, and courts often look closely at timing when evaluating such claims. Whether the proximity between the leave request and the termination was coincidental or consequential will likely become a central issue as the case moves forward.

But the sequence of events — a whistleblower reporting election misconduct, placed on leave amid controversy, then fired a day after requesting pregnancy-related medical leave — is certain to receive scrutiny.

The question facing Hamtramck

Hamtramck officials maintain that the clerk’s removal was justified. The courts will ultimately determine whether that claim holds up. But the public is left with several unanswered questions. Did the city follow the Open Meetings Act when it deliberated about removing its election official?  If so, what prompted City Councilmen, some of them facing criminal charges, to take such extra-legal action? Why does the termination letter cite authority the clerk did not possess? And why did the disciplinary action come immediately after the clerk reported election misconduct to state authorities? And why did the termination occur the day after the clerk requested federally protected medical leave during her pregnancy?

Until those questions are answered, the story of Hamtramck’s election controversy may not be about missing ballots at all.  It may be about how a city government responds when its own election official reports problems.