Advertisement

Community service ordered for Minnetonka man who voted twice in 2020 election

Prosecution of felony charges has been suspended.

September 18, 2022 at 8:00PM
Voting judge Johanna Boller cleaned voting booths on Aug. 11, 2020, in St. Paul. (Jeff Wheeler, Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Felony voter fraud charges against a 30-year-old Minnetonka man for casting two ballots in the 2020 election have been suspended and he was instead sanctioned to a day of community service.

Though fairly uncommon to see such cases in Minnesota — election officials say the voting-related crime rate is statistically zero — Alexander Leonard Peck faced two counts of unlawful voting and registering in more than one precinct, according to charges filed in Hennepin County District Court last month.

Peck admitted that he knew he could only vote once in an election and apologized to the Edina police officer who investigated the report of voter fraud. It's unclear who Peck voted for and why the case was suspended, as there is no documentation in district court to indicate his motive or omission. Calls and text messages sent to Peck over the past month haven't been returned. The charges will be dismissed once Peck completes a pretrial diversion program.

He is a licensed social worker at a clinic in Hutchinson who received his undergraduate degree from St. John University and master's from Boston University. Court records indicate that he lives in Minnetonka, but he voted absentee with a Minneapolis address in September 2020, then again in November at an Edina precinct where he registered using a Sunnyside Road address.

It wasn't until June 2021 that Edina police received unspecified evidence of Peck's unlawful voting record. In a phone call with a detective, Peck said "sorry about that" when confronted about voting twice, according to the criminal complaint.

Between January 1, 2020, and July 15, 2022, there have been a total of 72 charges and 22 convictions of voting related crimes, Minnesota Secretary of State spokeswoman Cassondra Knudson said in an email to the Star Tribune. For context, Knudson said that that conviction rate is "statistically zero" because there are more than 3.5 million registered voters in Minnesota.

Earlier this month, Peck was sanctioned to serve 24 hours of community service through the Hennepin County Attorney's Office Pretrial Diversion Program.

The case against him is suspended until September 2023, but until then Peck must remain law-abiding and meet all program requirements or else the prosecution will resume.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Last year, five people were charged in Stearns County with felonies for various forms of voter fraud, among them a St. Cloud man on probation who applied to receive an absentee ballot for the 2020 general election but threw it out.

In April, A 25-year-old Minneapolis man was sentenced to 90 days in the workhouse after admitting that he helped people submit absentee ballots that were fraudulently cast in 2018, then ultimately purged and never cast anew.

Abdihakim A. Essa pleaded guilty in Hennepin County District Court to four of 13 counts of intentionally making or signing a false certificate in the submission of the absentee ballots during a few weeks' time in the summer.

about the writer

about the writer

Kim Hyatt

Reporter

Kim Hyatt reports on North Central Minnesota. She previously covered Hennepin County courts.

See Moreicon

More from Minnesota Star Tribune

See More
In this photo taken Monday, March 6, 2017, in San Francisco, released confidential files by The University of California of a sexual misconduct case, like this one against UC Santa Cruz Latin Studies professor Hector Perla is shown. Perla was accused of raping a student during a wine-tasting outing in June 2015. Some of the files are so heavily redacted that on many pages no words are visible. Perla is one of 113 UC employees found to have violated the system's sexual misconduct policies in rece

We respect the desire of some tipsters to remain anonymous, and have put in place ways to contact reporters and editors to ensure the communication will be private and secure.

Advertisement
Advertisement

To leave a comment, .

Advertisement