Two Millbourne council members confessed to trying to steal an election. They have no plans to resign yet.

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.

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.

Tom Kramer, a former mayor of Millbourne who began raising flags to prosecutors about suspected fraud in 2021, said the men’s ability to stay on council and the slow prosecution of the case do little to deter similar crimes in the future.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Kramer asked Hasan and Ali directly if they would resign. They shook their heads.

“They’re basically thumbing their nose at the prosecutor, the judge, and the federal government. It doesn’t set a very good example,” Kramer said.

State law gives few avenues for local officials to be removed from office outside of resignations and elections.

If Hasan and Ali do not resign, the Pennsylvania General Assembly could pursue articles of impeachment against them. Attorney General Dave Sunday or District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer also could file a writ of quo warranto in court, asking a judge to remove them from office. A spokesperson for Sunday said in an email the office had not yet taken action and could not speculate on whether it would.

Ali’s current term expires at the end of the year, while Hasan’s seat is not back on the ballot until 2027.