A woman was arrested in Sioux City, Iowa, on Thursday after being indicted for allegedly committing voter fraud during the state’s 2020 primary and general elections, according to the Justice Department.
Prosecutors claim that her goal was to get her husband Jeremy Taylor, a former Iowa House member, elected to Congress. Taylor was running in the GOP primary to represent Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, a seat held at the time by far-right politician Steve King, who had become infamous for a string of offensive statements, including wondering aloud whether there’d be a population without rape or incest and why the term “white supremacist” is offensive.
Both King and Taylor lost the primary to current Rep. Randy Feenstra, who won the general election and replaced King in Congress 2021.
The indictment states that Jeremy Taylor’s wife, Kim Phuong Taylor, “visited numerous households within the Vietnamese community in Woodbury County,” collecting absentee ballots for voters who either “had limited ability to read and understand English and offering to help them vote.”
“Prior to both the primary and general elections in 2020, [Taylor] visited numerous households within the Vietnamese community in Woodbury County encouraging residents to fill out voter registration forms and absentee ballot request forms that she brought with her for each election,” the complaint says. “In some instances, [Taylor] either assisted the residents with filling out the forms or filled them out herself.”
She also signed voter registration and absentee ballot request forms for voters who weren’t present at the time, prosecutors allege. She then allegedly either mailed the forms to the Woodbury County Auditor’s Office or submitted them through drop boxes.
After Taylor lost his primary race to Feenstra, Phuong Taylor allegedly tried using the same scheme to get her husband elected as a Woodbury County supervisor in the fall 2020 general election. He won an appointment to the board of supervisors on Nov. 3 2020.
She’s being charged with 26 counts of providing false information and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration, and 23 counts of fraudulent voting, each carrying a maximum 5-year prison sentence.
Read the full complaint below:
