Three officials in Delco who used voter fraud to try to swing a mayoral election have pleaded guilty

The 2021 mayoral primary in Millbourne, a tiny Delaware County borough just west of Philadelphia, was decided by the slimmest of margins, with Md Nurul Hasan losing his bid to serve as the Democratic nominee by just 16 votes.

So over the next several months, Hasan — Millbourne’s council vice president — decided to hatch a scheme to ensure he could win the top office anyway.

First, Hasan urged voters in the largely Democratic borough not to vote for the party’s official candidate in the general election — and instead write his name atop their ballots.

Then, in a brazen bid to bolster his chances, Hasan conspired with two other council members to fraudulently alter about three dozen voter registrations in Pennsylvania’s online system, boosting the number of people in Millbourne’s voter rolls by about 5%. Hasan then requested mail-in ballots for those newly manipulated registrants — and cast the ballots for himself.

And yet, Hasan’s plot to become mayor still failed. He lost in the general election by about two dozen votes.

On Tuesday, the depths of the debacle were made clear as Hasan and his two coconspirators — council member Md Munsur Ali and former council member Md Rafikul Islam — pleaded guilty in federal court to crimes including conspiracy, fraudulent voter registration, and providing false information in voter registrations.

The men refrained from saying much while admitting their crimes before U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III, generally only answering “yes” or “no” to a series of standard questions.

Bartle is scheduled to sentence the men in June. They each face the possibility of years behind bars.

The pleas came about six weeks after federal prosecutors filed charges in the case. Hasan was also charged last month in a parallel state case in which he faces counts including unlawful voting and voter fraud.

In court documents, prosecutors said Hasan led the plan, working with Ali and Islam to reregister voters from neighboring townships and falsely state that they lived at Millbourne addresses. In order to do so, the men had to access voters’ personal identifying information, such as Social Security and drivers license numbers, and submit changes to Pennsylvania’s online voter registration platform.

Sometimes, that meant Hasan or Ali would ask friends to agree to have their registration altered, prosecutors said. But in other instances, the men were able to make changes without a voter’s knowledge.

(Islam was accused of having the smallest role in the scheme, allowing Hasan to use his email address when making changes to some registrations to try to avoid being detected, prosecutors said.)

Once the registrations were changed, prosecutors said, Hasan requested mail ballots and had them sent to addresses where he could receive them. The men then filled out and returned the ballots with Hasan’s name written in for mayor.

In total, prosecutors said, the scheme led Hasan to submit about three dozen fraudulent ballots. But he still lost the race to current Millbourne Mayor Mahabubul A. Tayub.

Millbourne is a small community, home to just over 1,200 people, with a large immigrant population. And after the men were charged, county election officials said the scheme represented an “exceedingly rare” form of voter fraud that risked swaying the results of a local election with a very small turnout.

Only about 300 people voted in the 2021 general election for mayor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Dubnoff said in court.

Despite Hasan’s loss in that contest, he has remained the borough council’s vice president — even after criminal charges were filed against him earlier this year. Ali is also still a council member.

Under state law, felony convictions are likely to prohibit the men from retaining those positions. But it was not immediately clear Tuesday how or when they might resign or be forced to do so. The borough’s mayor, council president, and solicitor did not respond to requests for comment.

Staff writers Katie Bernard and Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.