Nov. 22 (UPI) — The wife of a Republican Iowa official was found guilty on 52 counts of voter fraud in an attempt to help her husband get elected.
Kim Taylor, wife of Woodbury County Supervisor Jeremy Taylor, was found guilty Tuesday of 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, 23 counts of fraudulent voting and three counts of fraudulent registration. She faces up to five years in prison for each charge.
Taylor is accused of acting out a scheme to fraudulently bank votes for her husband when he ran for a seat in the U.S. House in June 2020. He did not win election but was elected to the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors in the fall election.
According to the Justice Department, Taylor again engaged in voter fraud during the fall election. Her sentencing will be scheduled at a later date and she has been released until that time.
Kim Taylor, who is a native of Vietnam, allegedly met with several Vietnamese adults who spoke limited English and filled out election forms, including registrations and ballots, on behalf of them and their children. The children were unaware that this had been done without their consent, despite some of them not living at home for several years.
Local election officials were alerted to potential voter fraud when they noticed several ballots with similar handwriting on them. The Woodbury County Auditor Pat Gill then alerted the FBI.
Prior to this, two college students attempted to request absentee ballots when they learned that ballots had already been cast in their names. The students were from Sioux City but were attending school at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.
“The right to vote is one of our most important constitutional rights. Ms. Taylor deprived citizens of their right to vote in order to benefit her husband’s campaign,” Timothy Daux, U.S. attorney, said in a statement to KCAU in Sioux City. “The guilty verdict is an example of how the justice system works to protect the voting rights of citizens, and ensure fair and honest elections.”
In total, eight young adults testified that they had not consented to their parents filling out elections for them and they were not aware that they had done so.
While Jeremy Taylor was not charged, he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, according to the Sioux City Journal.
Calls for his resignation have begun to surface from his fellow county supervisors, KTIV in Sioux City reports.
“Those of us in public office are entrusted to a high level of integrity and responsibility to the citizens we serve,” Mark Nelson, Woodbury County supervisor, said in a statement to the news station. “And at a time when so many are questioning the validity of their vote this type of conduct only deepens the very real concerns amongst our countrymen.”
Chairman Matthew Ung has also called on Taylor to resign. Like Taylor, Nelson and Ung are Republicans.
“The only thing I’m uncomfortable with is that his wife has been set up to take the fall,” Ung said in a statement.
