Tag: Minnesota state government

Chauvin, who killed George Floyd, pleads guilty in tax case

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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The former Minneapolis police officer convicted in the 2020 killing of George Floyd pleaded guilty Friday to two tax evasion counts, admitting that he didn’t file Minnesota income taxes for two years due to “financial concerns.”

Derek Chauvin pleaded guilty specifically to two counts of aiding and abetting, failing to file tax returns to the state of Minnesota for the 2016 and 2017 tax years.

Chauvin appeared in a Minnesota court via Zoom from a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, where he is serving his sentences on a state murder conviction for killing Floyd and on a federal count of violating Floyd’s civil rights.

He stood in a room and paced around before Friday’s hearing began. When Washington County Judge Sheridan Hawley asked why he didn’t file his Minnesota tax returns, he told the judge: “The true reason is some financial concerns at the time.”

He also said: “I had to find significant funds from family to pay a previous year’s return and, frankly, I’ve been playing catch up ever since.”

He was sentenced to 13 months in prison on the tax charges, but he has already been incarcerated for longer than that and was given credit for time served.

Floyd died May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against the Black man’s neck for more than nine minutes. Floyd, who was handcuffed, repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. The killing, which was recorded on video by a bystander, sparked worldwide protests as part of a broader reckoning over racial injustice.

Shortly after Floyd’s killing, Chauvin and his then-wife were charged with multiple counts for allegedly underreporting their income to the state of Minnesota and failing to file Minnesota tax returns. The complaints alleged that from 2014 to 2019, the Chauvins underreported their joint income by $464,433.

With unpaid taxes, interest and fees, the Chauvins, who have since divorced, owe $37,868 to the state, according to court documents.

The tax investigation began in June 2020, after the Minnesota Department of Revenue received information about suspicious filings by Derek Chauvin. The agency started an internal cursory review and then opened a formal investigation.

The probe ultimately found the Chauvins did not file state tax returns for 2016, 2017 or 2018, and did not report all of their income for 2014 and 2015. When tax returns for 2016 through 2019 were filed in June 2020, the Chauvins did not report all of their income in those years either, the complaints said.

The complaints said Chauvin was required to pay taxes on income from off-duty security work he did at several jobs between 2014 and 2020. Investigators believe that at one job he earned about $95,920 over those six years that was not reported.

His ex-wife, Kellie May Chauvin, pleaded guilty Feb. 24 to two counts of aiding and abetting their failure to file tax returns for 2016 and 2017. Her plea agreement called for three years of probation and restitution with no more than 45 days of community service. The other charges were dropped. Hawley said she will be sentenced May 12.

Kellie Chauvin filed for divorce shortly after Floyd’s death, and a judge approved the divorce last February under terms that were kept sealed. The judge rejected an initial proposed settlement that would have given Kellie Chauvin most of their property and money, which had fueled speculation that the Chauvins were trying to shield their assets.

Documents in the tax case said the couple owned a second home in Florida, and alleged they also failed to pay proper sales tax on a $100,000 BMW purchased in Minnesota in 2018.

Chauvin was convicted of state murder and manslaughter charges in 2021 and is serving 22 1/2 years in that case. He also pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced to 21 years. He is serving the sentences concurrently.

Three other officers were convicted of federal charges of violating Floyd’s rights. Two of them have also been convicted of a state count of aiding and abetting manslaughter, while the third is waiting for a judge to decide his fate on the state charges.

___

Trisha Ahmed is a corps member for the Associated Press/ Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow her on Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15

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March 17, 2023
Some Democratic-led states seek to bolster voter protections

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers in several Democratic-controlled states are advocating sweeping voter protections this year, reacting to what they view as a broad undermining of voting rights by the Supreme Court and Republican-led states as well as a failed effort in Congress to bolster access to the polls.

Legislators in Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey and New Mexico have introduced voting rights measures, while Michigan’s secretary of state is preparing a plan.

Among other things, the proposals would require state approval for local governments to change redistricting or voting procedures, ban voter suppression and intimidation, mandate that ballots are printed in more languages, increase protections for voters with disabilities, ensure the right to vote for those with previous felony convictions and instruct judges to prioritize voter access when hearing election-related challenges.

The measures are taking a much wider approach than legislation targeting a single aspect of voting or elections law. They seek to implement on a statewide basis many of the protections under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that many Democrats and voting rights groups say is being stripped of its most important elements.

If the legislation is enacted, the states would join California, New York, Oregon, Washington and Virginia in having comprehensive voting rights laws.

“It’s up to states now to ensure that the right to vote is protected,” said Janai Nelson, president of the the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Maryland’s proposal includes a requirement for local voting changes to receive preapproval, mirroring core provisions of the federal law that was struck down by the Supreme Court a decade ago.

Maryland was not among the states, mostly in the South, that was covered under the provision known as preclearance before the court ended it. But lawmakers there saw it as important because of persistent concerns over how districts for local governing bodies have been drawn, said Morgan Drayton, policy and engagement manager at Common Cause Maryland.

“A lot of our maps here are drawn behind closed doors, and there’s not a lot of input from the public that’s able to be given,” she said. “So this would do a lot to make these processes more transparent.”

In Maryland’s Baltimore County, a lawsuit claimed the county council’s map packed most Black voters into a single district. The state legislation would require jurisdictions in Maryland with a history of voter discrimination to have redistricting and election changes cleared by the state attorney general.

Democratic state Del. Stephanie Smith, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said that despite Maryland’s racial diversity and history of diversity in its political leadership, “access to the ballot and equitable representation is uneven.”

“This bill strengthens our commitment to voting access and protections at a time of great stress on our democratic institutions,” she said.

Proposals in Michigan and New Mexico address harassment against election workers and voters, especially those in minority communities. One of several bills in New Mexico would protect election officials, from the secretary of state to county and municipal elections clerks, from intimidation. That would be defined as inducing or attempting to induce fear, and a violation would be punishable as a fourth-degree felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said she will seek similar protections for voters, including prohibiting firearms within a certain distance of polling places.

“We need an explicit ban on voter suppression and intimidation,” she said.

Connecticut’s legislation would expand language assistance for voters who speak, read or understand languages other than English. Language assistance is covered under the federal law, but only specifies protections for Spanish-speakers and for Asian, Native American and Alaska Native language minorities.

Ballots offered in Arabic, Haitian Creole and other languages also are needed, said Steven Lance, policy counsel at the national NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

A language would be covered if the group speaking it is more than 2% of the citizens of voting age in a particular municipality or the group includes more than 4,000 citizens of voting age, under Connecticut’s legislative proposal.

Residents also would have the right to ask the secretary of state to review whether a certain language should be covered, Lance said.

In New Jersey, advocacy organizations are pushing to expand voting rights legislation to include more groups that would be specifically protected from discrimination, including the state’s sizable Arab American population.

“A reality is the federal VRA was originally crafted in 1965, and while there have been other bills in the decade since, the VRA doesn’t reflect the diversity of the population of New Jersey in 2023,” said Henal Patel, law & policy director at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

Some state voting rights bills also seek to create databases for information that has not always been readily available, such as polling place locations, voting rules and redistricting maps. The bills also would specify that state judges interpret voting laws in a way that ensures people maintain their right to vote.

Democrats in Minnesota are pushing numerous voting changes, including restoring voting rights to felons as soon as they are released from prison, allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister so they are ready to vote as soon as they turn 18 and automatically registering people to vote when they obtain or renew their driver’s licenses.

Passing state voting rights legislation is only half the battle, said state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, a Virginia Democrat who introduced a state voting rights act that passed in 2021 when Democrats controlled both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office.

McClellan noted that ensuring voting rights historically was a bipartisan issue, but said Republicans are now focused on “fighting phantom voter fraud” — making this year’s Virginia legislative elections all the more important.

“The entire General Assembly is up for election this year, and I think that’s going to be a big theme in the election — that if we want to protect our progress on voting rights, we’re going to need to make sure that Democrats keep the Senate and regain the majority in the House,” McClellan said.

McClellan won a special election this past week to fill an open seat in the U.S. House, where she will make history as the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.

___

Associated Press coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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February 25, 2023
New year expected to bring more changes to state voting laws

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State lawmakers around the country introduced thousands of bills to change the way elections are run after former President Donald Trump falsely blamed his 2020 loss on voter fraud. Hundreds became law.

Even with proponents of Trump’s election lies roundly defeated during this year’s midterms, advocates on both sides of the voting debate are bracing for another round of election-related legislation. Republicans are eager to tighten election rules further while Democrats, who took control of two additional statehouses, will seek to make it easier to cast a ballot.

Minnesota’s newly reelected Democratic secretary of state, Steve Simon, said he had spoken to several secretaries of state who are eager to push for changes in voting. Losses by election-denier candidates in top races have emboldened some Democrats to champion expansions of voting rights.

“Voters spoke loudly and clearly about what they wanted and didn’t want, both in regards to this office and all these other issues,” said Simon, who defeated a Republican challenger who parroted some of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

Democrats won majorities in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature in November, giving Simon a good shot at enacting changes. He expects to urge lawmakers to adopt automatic voter registration and allow high school students to pre-register.

States routinely make adjustments in their voting laws — some subtle, some dramatic. But experts have never seen an explosion of legislation like that which followed the 2020 presidential election, when more than 3,600 election bills were introduced, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks the legislation.

Liz Avore, senior adviser to the group, said 22 states in the last couple of years expanded access to the ballot, 10 created new restrictions and five expanded access in some ways while creating new barriers in others. This, she said, has created a divide in the U.S. in which “your ZIP code determines your access to our democracy.”

That divide seems likely to grow next year. Legislatures won’t convene until January at the earliest, so it’s unclear how many bills are being drafted and on which subjects. But Texas, where the Legislature meets only once every two years and lawmakers can “pre-file” drafts of legislation for the upcoming session, offers a preview.

The Associated Press has identified nearly 100 election-related legislative proposals already filed in the state, both to increase access to the ballot box and to further restrict it. This includes one that would allow the state’s top lawyer to assign a prosecutor focused on election crimes, testing the boundaries of a court ruling earlier this year that said the attorney general did not have the authority to prosecute election crimes.

Another would assign a group of peace officers to serve as election marshals who investigate claims of election-related missteps. That would follow the lead of Florida, where officers in a special unit assigned to elections have already made a handful of arrests — including of people who mistakenly thought they were eligible to vote under a 2018 constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to some felons. Critics have labeled the unit a political tool of the governor.

Matt Simpson, a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said current election legislation proposed in the state, such as increasing criminal penalties for election crimes and creating election marshals, is “extreme” and “very intimidating” for voters. He said these approaches are primarily political and don’t solve actual voting-related issues, such as high rejection rates of mail ballots and ballot applications due to widespread confusion on the identification numbers necessary.

“It is certainly the case that Texas elections do not have widespread fraud,” Simpson said. “These bills, these concerns that are raised, are solutions in search of a problem.”

The reliability of Texas’ elections was underscored by the release earlier this month of an audit by the secretary of state’s office. The 359-page audit of the 2020 election in the state’s two largest Democratic counties and two largest Republican ones found some “irregularities,” but they were largely related to holding an election during a pandemic.

“In most cases, the audit found that the counties followed their procedures and clearly documented their activities,” the audit says.

Ohio is another Republican-controlled state where lawmakers continue to push for restrictions.

The state is likely to draw national attention next year after Republicans indicated they might try again to place on the May ballot a measure requiring a 60% majority for any future constitutional amendments to pass. That provision could limit the ability of Ohio voters to rein in GOP gerrymandering or otherwise counter the majority-Republican Legislature, such as by codifying the right to an abortion.

Republicans failed to muster enough votes during December’s lame-duck session to place the higher threshold for passing amendments on the ballot, but they did pass a sweeping election law overhaul. The bill adds a photo ID requirement for voters and provides them for free, codifies a directive requiring one ballot drop box per county and eliminates early voting on the Monday before Election Day — county officials had said it interfered with their final preparations. The legislation also shrinks the window for receiving mail-in ballots after the election from 10 days to four.

Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone said taking steps to tighten access to the voting booth and speed vote counting are aimed at improving the “perception, confidence and integrity” in elections.

“Folks, perception matters,” Gavarone said. “Whether you want to believe it or not, the goal should not just be to secure our elections, but it’s imperative that we give people doubting the results of our elections reason to participate in them.”

Voting rights advocates were outraged.

“This legislation will make voting unnecessarily harder for seniors, students, rural Ohioans, active-duty military and other eligible Ohioans,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters Ohio.

The office of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said he was reviewing the legislation.

Democrats are readying their own pushes, especially in two states where they won control of the legislatures and retained the governorship — Michigan and Minnesota.

Michigan voters not only gave Democrats control of the state Legislature, they also passed Proposal 2, a sweeping ballot initiative that expanded early and mail voting. Democrats already are preparing to strengthen the measure in the legislative session.

“There will need to be quite a bit of implementation legislation next term, and I look forward to working with the Legislature and the governor’s office to enact this,” Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, a Democrat, said in an interview.

Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of State, said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson will likely ask lawmakers to allocate $100 million annually for local election offices and propose new measures against circulating election misinformation. A Democratic state lawmaker also proposed imposing penalties for people who pressure election workers, a key cause of Democrats in state legislatures after conspiracy theorists targeted voting officials after the 2020 presidential election.

In Minnesota, Simon said he also wants to increase penalties against threatening or interfering with election workers. He said he’ll push a range of other reforms, including pre-registering high schoolers so they can quickly join the voting rolls upon turning 18. Younger voters lean Democratic, but Simon said he’s not trying to promote his party.

He said he merely wants to make the electorate more reflective of the population, a goal he also pushed when the statehouse was split between Republicans and Democrats.

“These are reforms that will benefit everyone,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

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December 30, 2022
New year expected to bring more changes to state voting laws

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State lawmakers around the country introduced thousands of bills to change the way elections are run after former President Donald Trump falsely blamed his 2020 loss on voter fraud. Hundreds became law.

Even with proponents of Trump’s election lies roundly defeated during this year’s midterms, advocates on both sides of the voting debate are bracing for another round of election-related legislation. Republicans are eager to tighten election rules further while Democrats, who took control of two additional statehouses, will seek to make it easier to cast a ballot.

Minnesota’s newly reelected Democratic secretary of state, Steve Simon, said he had spoken to several secretaries of state who are eager to push for changes in voting. Losses by election-denier candidates in top races have emboldened some Democrats to champion expansions of voting rights.

“Voters spoke loudly and clearly about what they wanted and didn’t want, both in regards to this office and all these other issues,” said Simon, who defeated a Republican challenger who parroted some of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

Democrats won majorities in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature in November, giving Simon a good shot at enacting changes. He expects to urge lawmakers to adopt automatic voter registration and allow high school students to pre-register.

States routinely make adjustments in their voting laws — some subtle, some dramatic. But experts have never seen an explosion of legislation like that which followed the 2020 presidential election, when more than 3,600 election bills were introduced, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks the legislation.

Liz Avore, senior adviser to the group, said 22 states in the last couple of years expanded access to the ballot, 10 created new restrictions and five expanded access in some ways while creating new barriers in others. This, she said, has created a divide in the U.S. in which “your ZIP code determines your access to our democracy.”

That divide seems likely to grow next year. Legislatures won’t convene until January at the earliest, so it’s unclear how many bills are being drafted and on which subjects. But Texas, where the Legislature meets only once every two years and lawmakers can “pre-file” drafts of legislation for the upcoming session, offers a preview.

The Associated Press has identified nearly 100 election-related legislative proposals already filed in the state, both to increase access to the ballot box and to further restrict it. This includes one that would allow the state’s top lawyer to assign a prosecutor focused on election crimes, testing the boundaries of a court ruling earlier this year that said the attorney general did not have the authority to prosecute election crimes.

Another would assign a group of peace officers to serve as election marshals who investigate claims of election-related missteps. That would follow the lead of Florida, where officers in a special unit assigned to elections have already made a handful of arrests — including of people who mistakenly thought they were eligible to vote under a 2018 constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to some felons. Critics have labeled the unit a political tool of the governor.

Matt Simpson, a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said current election legislation proposed in the state, such as increasing criminal penalties for election crimes and creating election marshals, is “extreme” and “very intimidating” for voters. He said these approaches are primarily political and don’t solve actual voting-related issues, such as high rejection rates of mail ballots and ballot applications due to widespread confusion on the identification numbers necessary.

“It is certainly the case that Texas elections do not have widespread fraud,” Simpson said. “These bills, these concerns that are raised, are solutions in search of a problem.”

The reliability of Texas’ elections was underscored by the release earlier this month of an audit by the secretary of state’s office. The 359-page audit of the 2020 election in the state’s two largest Democratic counties and two largest Republican ones found some “irregularities,” but they were largely related to holding an election during a pandemic.

“In most cases, the audit found that the counties followed their procedures and clearly documented their activities,” the audit says.

Ohio is another Republican-controlled state where lawmakers continue to push for restrictions.

The state is likely to draw national attention next year after Republicans indicated they might try again to place on the May ballot a measure requiring a 60% majority for any future constitutional amendments to pass. That provision could limit the ability of Ohio voters to rein in GOP gerrymandering or otherwise counter the majority-Republican Legislature, such as by codifying the right to an abortion.

Republicans failed to muster enough votes during December’s lame-duck session to place the higher threshold for passing amendments on the ballot, but they did pass a sweeping election law overhaul. The bill adds a photo ID requirement for voters and provides them for free, codifies a directive requiring one ballot drop box per county and eliminates early voting on the Monday before Election Day — county officials had said it interfered with their final preparations. The legislation also shrinks the window for receiving mail-in ballots after the election from 10 days to four.

Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone said taking steps to tighten access to the voting booth and speed vote counting are aimed at improving the “perception, confidence and integrity” in elections.

“Folks, perception matters,” Gavarone said. “Whether you want to believe it or not, the goal should not just be to secure our elections, but it’s imperative that we give people doubting the results of our elections reason to participate in them.”

Voting rights advocates were outraged.

“This legislation will make voting unnecessarily harder for seniors, students, rural Ohioans, active-duty military and other eligible Ohioans,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters Ohio.

The office of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said he was reviewing the legislation.

Democrats are readying their own pushes, especially in two states where they won control of the legislatures and retained the governorship — Michigan and Minnesota.

Michigan voters not only gave Democrats control of the state Legislature, they also passed Proposal 2, a sweeping ballot initiative that expanded early and mail voting. Democrats already are preparing to strengthen the measure in the legislative session.

“There will need to be quite a bit of implementation legislation next term, and I look forward to working with the Legislature and the governor’s office to enact this,” Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, a Democrat, said in an interview.

Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of State, said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson will likely ask lawmakers to allocate $100 million annually for local election offices and propose new measures against circulating election misinformation. A Democratic state lawmaker also proposed imposing penalties for people who pressure election workers, a key cause of Democrats in state legislatures after conspiracy theorists targeted voting officials after the 2020 presidential election.

In Minnesota, Simon said he also wants to increase penalties against threatening or interfering with election workers. He said he’ll push a range of other reforms, including pre-registering high schoolers so they can quickly join the voting rolls upon turning 18. Younger voters lean Democratic, but Simon said he’s not trying to promote his party.

He said he merely wants to make the electorate more reflective of the population, a goal he also pushed when the statehouse was split between Republicans and Democrats.

“These are reforms that will benefit everyone,” he said.

———

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

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December 28, 2022