Former DFL Minnesota senator convicted of burglary elected to Woodbury City Council
A former Democratic Minnesota state senator convicted of burglary last year will soon serve on the Woodbury City Council following last week's election.
Nicole Mitchell won one of two nonpartisan seats on the council with more than 13% of the vote share of 10 people on the ballot, according to unofficial results. Her victory comes more than a year after she resigned from the Legislature following a felony burglary conviction for breaking into her stepmother's home in April 2024.
She received a 21-month prison sentence that a judge stayed while she is on supervised probation until 2030. A 2023 law change that restored the right to vote for people with felony convictions after leaving prison made it possible for Mitchell to run for the seat with time remaining on her sentence.
She meets the "eligible voter" criteria for holding public office set by the Minnesota Constitution, experts say.
"So once Minnesota law changed, enabling people who have felony convictions but are no longer in jail to vote, that meant that people with felony convictions who are out of jail can also serve in public office," said Jill Hasday, a constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.
A now-deleted Department of Corrections web page said people convicted of felonies cannot hold public office until a court-ordered discharge from probation or at the end of their sentence.
A spokesperson told WCCO the website was outdated and didn't reflect the 2023 law change. It has since been updated, as of Monday, to say Minnesotans can hold public office if they're allowed to vote.
"Because the Minnesota Constitution, which supersedes law, links voting and ability to hold office together — implicitly or explicitly, whatever you want to describe it here, when they changed the law regarding the eligibility to vote they changed automatically the ability of ex-felons to be able to run for office and hold office again," said David Schultz, political science and legal studies professor at Hamline University.
Hasday noted that other states may have different rules, since states are the "default regulators" of elections under the U.S. Constitution. Minnesota is one of 25 states, according to the Sentencing Project, where the eligibility to hold public office is generally the same as eligibility to vote.
"Congress can come in and pass federal laws about elections, but in absence of federal rules, state law controls, so states, for instance, decide whether to disenfranchise felons," Hasday said.
In a post on Facebook, Mitchell thanked her supporters and said she is "grateful to serve this community" in her new position.