Not Quite How Get-Out-the-Vote Is Supposed to Work

From Eighth Circuit Judge David Stras (joined by Judges Steven Grasz and Jonathan Kobes) in yesterday’s U.S. v. Taylor:

Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, moved to the United States over 20 years ago. Along with her husband, she settled in Sioux City, Iowa, where she was active in the local Vietnamese community.

In 2020, Taylor decided to run her own version of a get-out-the-vote campaign. The idea was to help Vietnamese Americans, some of whom struggled with English and were unfamiliar with our election system, register and vote. Her motives were not purely altruistic: she hoped they would vote for her husband, who was a candidate in the election.

Absentee voting was common during the pandemic. Taylor made it easy by bringing the necessary forms, translating them, having voters complete them, and returning them to the county auditor’s office. Once the ballots arrived in the mail, Taylor would come back and help fill them out.

Sometimes, however, Taylor did more than just help. If she learned that a voting-age child was away from home, perhaps at college, she would instruct someone else in the family to complete the necessary forms and then vote on their behalf. For others, she just completed those steps herself. She turned in a total of 26 doctored documents, all with handwriting or signatures that were not the children’s own….

Unsurprisingly, the convictions were affirmed.