SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — The wife of a northwest Iowa county supervisor has been charged with 52 counts of voter fraud after she allegedly filled out and cast absentee ballots in her husband’s unsuccessful race for the Republican nomination for Congress in 2020, federal prosecutors said. said.
Kim Phuong Taylor, 49, was arrested Friday and pleaded not guilty to the charges before being released on a personal recognizance bond, the Sioux City Journal reported. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 20.
Prosecutors allege in an indictment unsealed Thursday that Phuong Taylor filled out voter registration forms or mailed absentee ballots to people in Sioux City’s Vietnamese community who had limited ability to read and understand English.
He filled out “dozens of voter registration, absentee ballot request forms, and absentee ballots containing false information,” and mailed absentee ballots, sometimes without knowing the person whose name was used, according to the indictment.
Pat Gill, who is Woodbury County’s auditor and election commissioner, said Thursday that he notified the Iowa secretary of state after someone contacted his office because ballots had been fraudulently entered in November 2020.
He said his office later provided the FBI with suspected fraudulent registration forms and absentee ballots.
Phuong Taylor committed the fraud before the June 2020 primary election, in which her husband, Jeremy Taylor, a former Iowa House member, finished third in the race for the Republican nomination to run for Iowa’s 4th District congressional seat, prosecutors said. The winner of that race, Randy Feenstra, easily won election to Congress in November.
Prosecutors allege that Phuong Taylor committed similar fraud before the November 2020 election in which Jeremy Taylor was elected to the Woodbury County Council, according to the indictment.
Jeremy Taylor was not named in the indictment and was not accused of wrongdoing.
Kim Phuong Taylor’s attorney, John Greer of Spencer, Iowa, declined to comment on the allegations, the Journal reported.