Majewski received 52 percent of the vote, winning by 98 votes over challenger Abdul Algazali, according to unofficial results.

In the race for three city council seats, the winners were incumbent Mohammed Hassan, Andrea Karpinski and Titus R. Walters.

On Monday, Deputy City Clerk August Gitschlag counted at least 170 people who streamed into Hamtramck’s City Hall, all informing his office they would not be in town on Election Day and needed absentee ballots.

The barrage of requests startled Gitschlag and his staff of one. Typically, when he worked during election seasons in Brownstown or Commerce Township, he would see no more than a handful of folks wanting to vote absentee the day before the election.

“This office gets like three of those kinds of requests” on Mondays, Gitschlag said.

But in this densely populated, working-class community, change is afoot. While Polish Americans have traditionally dominated local politics, the city’s Muslims have taken steps in recent years to pick up political representation inside City Hall.

Monday’s last-minute absentee ballot seekers all appeared to be of Arab or Bengali descent, Gitschlag said.

Algazali, a councilman and chiropractor, might have been the nation’s first mayor from Yemen had he defeated Majewski, a Polish-American project manager who works at the University of Michigan. Algazali could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Following the November 1999 election, the Justice Department received complaints from Arab and Bengali-American voters in Hamtramck claiming violations of the Voting Rights Act, saying their citizenship had been unfairly challenged by private citizens during the general election.

The city’s consent decree in that case ended several years ago, but the Justice Department on Tuesday was present to ensure that Hamtramck was complying with the Voting Rights Act.