Iowa elected official’s wife arrested in alleged voter fraud scheme
Federal prosecutors said that the wife of a county supervisor in the northwest of Iowa has been charged with 52 counts of voter fraud after she allegedly filled out and cast absentee ballots in her husband’s unsuccessful 2020 bid for the Republican nomination for Congress.
The Sioux City Journal reported that Kim Phuong Taylor, 49, was arrested on Thursday and pleaded not guilty to the charges before being released on a personal recognizance bond. The trial for her is set to begin on March 20.
In an indictment that was released on Thursday, the prosecution claims that Phuong Taylor delivered absentee ballots or completed voter registration forms for members of the Vietnamese community in Sioux City who lacked the ability to read and comprehend English.
According to the indictment, she delivered absentee ballots, sometimes without the knowledge of the people whose names were used, and completed “dozens of voter registrations, absentee ballot request forms, and absentee ballots containing false information.”
Thursday, Pat Gill, who is also the election commissioner and auditor for Woodbury County, said that he informed the Iowa secretary of state’s office after someone contacted his office about a fraudulently cast ballot in their name in November 2020.
He stated that his office later provided the FBI with absentee ballots and registration forms suspected of being fraudulent.
Prosecutors claim that Phuong Taylor engaged in the fraud prior to the June 2020 primary, in which her husband, Jeremy Taylor, a former member of the Iowa House of Representatives, finished a distant third in the race for the Republican nomination to run for the congressional seat in Iowa’s 4th District. Randy Feenstra, who won that race, was easily elected to Congress in November.
