Republican candidate's wife arrested and charged with casting 23 fraudulent votes for her husband in the 2020 election

An absentee ballot application form.
An absentee-ballot application.Getty Images
  • Kim Phuong Taylor was arrested Thursday and accused of multiple counts of voter fraud.

  • Prosecutors say Taylor cast 23 fraudulent votes for her husband in the 2020 election.

  • Jeremy Taylor, her husband, is an elected Republican.

The wife of an Iowa Republican who ran for Congress in 2020 was arrested Thursday and accused of casting 23 fraudulent votes for her husband.

In an 11-page indictment, prosecutors say Kim Phuong Taylor "visited numerous households within the Vietnamese community in Woodbury County" where she collected absentee ballots for people who were not present at the time. Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, then filled out and cast those ballots herself, the indictment alleges, "causing the casting of votes in the names of residents who had no knowledge of and had not consented to the casting of their ballots."

Taylor is also accused of signing voter-registration forms on behalf of residents who were not present. In all, prosecutors charged her with 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration, and 23 counts of fraudulent voting. Each charge carries a maximum five-year prison sentence.

The goal, prosecutors allege, was to get her husband, the Republican politician Jeremy Taylor, elected to public office.

Jeremy Taylor ran in the 2020 GOP primary for Iowa's 4th Congressional District, which at the time was represented by Steve King, a far-right politician with ties to white nationalists. Taylor ended up finishing third, garnering just over 6,400 votes.

He was more successful in the fall 2020 general election, where he ran as a Republican candidate for the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors. He serves as the board's vice chairperson. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The couple met while Jeremy Taylor was teaching at a university in Vietnam, according to his official biography. They have six children.

Kim Phuong Taylor's court-appointed attorney, John P. Greer, declined to comment on behalf of his client. According to court documents, she is out on bail.

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