SIOUX CITY, Iowa — The wife of a northwest Iowa county supervisor has been charged with 52 counts of voter fraud after she allegedly filled out and voted absentee in her husband’s unsuccessful race to be elected. Republican nominee for Congress in 2020, federal prosecutors said.
Kim Phuong Taylor, 49, was arrested on Thursday and pleaded not guilty before being released with a personal certificate, Sioux City Journal report. Her trial is scheduled to begin on March 20.
Prosecutors allege in an unsealed indictment Thursday that Phuong Taylor filled out voter registration forms or passed absentee ballots to people in Sioux City’s Vietnamese community, who people with limited ability to read and understand English.
She filled out “dozens of voter registrations, absentee ballot request forms, and false absentee ballots” and delivered absentee ballots whose names were sometimes used. without knowledge, according to the indictment.
Pat Gill, the auditor and election commissioner for Woodbury County, said Thursday that he notified the Iowa secretary of state’s office after someone contacted his office because a ballot had been rigged. bear their name in November 2020.
He said his office then provided the FBI with registration forms suspected of fraud and absentee ballots.
Phuong Taylor committed fraud ahead of the June 2020 primaries, in which her husband, Jeremy Taylor, a former member of the Iowa House of Representatives, finished third in the race for the nomination. Republican nomination to run for Iowa’s 4th District seat, prosecutors allege. The winner of that race, Randy Feenstraeasily won election to Congress in November of that year.
Prosecutors allege Phuong Taylor committed similar fraud before the November 2020 election, in which Jeremy Taylor was elected to Woodbury County Council, according to the indictment.
Jeremy Taylor is not named in the indictment and has not been charged with misconduct.
The Journal reported that Kim Phuong Taylor’s attorney, John Greer of Spencer, Iowa, declined to comment on the allegations.
