On Thursday, police in Iowa detained the wife of a Republican congressional candidate who had cast 23 ballots in his stead.
Prosecutors claim in an 11-page indictment that Kim Phuong Taylor “visited multiple residences within the Vietnamese community in Woodbury County” to collect absentee ballots from persons who were not present at the polls. According to the indictment, Vietnam-born Taylor “caused the casting of votes in the names of persons who had no knowledge of and had not consented to the casting of their ballots” by filling out and submitting the ballots herself.
Taylor is also charged with forging the signatures of absent citizens on voter registration applications. Prosecutors say she committed 23 charges of fraudulent voting, 3 instances of fraudulent registration, and 26 counts of supplying false information in order to vote. The maximum term for each count is 5 years in jail.
Prosecutors claim she did this to help her Republican politician husband, Jeremy Taylor, win an election.
In the Republican primary election of 2020, Jeremy Taylor sought to unseat Steve King, a far-right politician with links to white supremacists, as representative of Iowa’s 4th congressional district. Taylor received a little over 6,400 votes, putting her in third place.
However, Taylor’s victory as a Republican candidate for the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors in the autumn 2020 general election was far greater. He is now the board’s vice chairman. He has not yet commented after being asked.
According to Jeremy Taylor’s official biography, the pair first met while he was teaching at a university in Vietnam. They’re proud parents of six kids.
Lawyer John P. Greer, who was designated by the court to represent Kim Taylor, said he would not speak for her. She has posted a bond and is free to leave the court at this time.