A Sioux City Republican activist who was convicted of illegally filling in ballots escaped a far harsher punishment on Monday for her 52 acts of voter fraud, which could have carried a five-year prison sentence for each.
Instead, Federal Judge Leonard Strand sentenced Kim Phoung Taylor to serve four months in federal prison as part of her punishment.
According to federal court documents, Taylor, 50, will serve four months at Waseca Federal Correctional Institution in Minnesota, four months of home confinement, and two years of supervised release all of which will run concurrently.
Each count of voter fraud was punishable by up to five years in prison. Strand said he was lenient on his sentencing because Taylor has no criminal history and she needs to raise a family with school-age children, according to Siouxland Public Media.
Kim Taylor concocted various election schemes in 2020 to get her husband, Jeremy Taylor, elected, including voting on ballots issued to members of Sioux City’s Vietnamese community.
Jeremy Taylor, a Republican, represents District 3 on the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors. Despite pressure from other Republican members of the board to resign, Jeremy Taylor refused to do so, but he will not run for reelection in the fall.
He has not been charged with any crimes but was named as an unindicted conspirator in his wife’s voter fraud efforts.
Kim Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, approached members of the Sioux City Vietnamese community and offered to help them vote. Some of these people had limited ability to read and understand English.
Taylor would visit the homes of these Vietnamese community members and bring voter registration forms and absentee ballot forms and, in some cases, fill them out on their behalf.
According to the Sioux City Journal, Taylor also used people’s ballots to cast votes for Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election. The Journal reports that one of the people Taylor forged a ballot for was a registered Democrat and he testified that he “had no intention of voting for Donald Trump in that election.”
Siouxland Public Media reports that during the sentencing, Judge Strand was concerned people would assume the US Department of Justice had targeted Taylor because her voter fraud efforts were used to boost her husband, who is a Republican, and the federal government is under a Democratic administration. A federal prosecutor downplayed that notion and told the judge, “We follow the evidence where it leads us … regardless of political party.”
