With Arizona’s primary elections just months away, a judge won’t pause a court ruling with wide-ranging impacts on Maricopa County’s elections despite concerns from the Board of Supervisors that it will cause chaos this year.
Last month, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled in favor of Republican Recorder Justin Heap in the lawsuit he filed against the board of supervisors over control of different parts of the county’s elections.
The order seemingly resolved many issues the recorder and supervisors have fought over for more than a year since Heap took office in January 2025.
Blaney ordered the board to give Heap back control of his own information technology systems after the supervisors consolidated the recorder’s staff under its own supervision. The judge also provided some clarity on Arizona’s complicated election laws, which divide administrative duties between recorders and the supervisors.
But the supervisors asked the judge to stay the ruling, arguing that making drastic changes ahead of the upcoming election season — such as splitting apart the intertwined IT system — will cause confusion for election workers and voters.
Blaney didn’t buy that argument, saying the board has had plenty of time to prepare.
“But the Court finds it inexplicable that the Board of Supervisors — in the nine months since Recorder Heap filed the present lawsuit — would not have considered and planned for the possibility that the Court would rule in favor of Recorder Heap,” Blaney wrote.
Board Chair Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican like Heap, criticized the ruling, calling it “disappointing, but not surprising.”
“The Board did the right thing in seeking a stay to prevent last-minute disruptions that could burden election workers and confuse voters, yet the Court dismissed those very real concerns,” she said in a statement. “The idea that we should have planned for this outcome with massive, speculative changes to our election systems is unrealistic. You don’t overhaul operations, staffing, and infrastructure in the middle of an election cycle based on a guess.”
But Heap, the county recorder, said it is the supervisors who are causing confusion for voters by prolonging the litigation he first filed last summer.
“This case was never about personalities or politics,” Heap said in a statement. “It was about whether Arizona law still means what it says. The Court answered that question decisively. It is time for the Board to accept reality, respect the rule of law, and focus on preparing for the upcoming elections.”
Over the course of the case, Blaney regularly encouraged both sides to find a compromise outside of the courtroom, saying judges are loath to play referee between quarreling elected officials.
He reiterated that call in his most recent order.
Blaney wrote he is “encouraging the parties to immediately negotiate a reasonable, mutually acceptable resolution of this dispute. If the parties are unable to resolve the entirety of this dispute, the Court encourages the parties to at least negotiate a temporary resolution that avoids any interference with the upcoming elections.”
Before Blaney’s ruling in the case, the supervisors actually voted to hand back Heap control over most of the disrupted duties and staff addressed by the judge.
But the fight continued as the two sides then sparred over the specifics of how they would split up those tasks.
In the event the two sides do reach an agreement, Blaney said he is willing to defer to their judgement.
But that outcome seems unlikely, which the judge acknowledged when he denied a separate motion by Republican Supervisor Mark Stewart, who asked Blaney to pause the ruling and order both sides to seek mediation.
“While it appears that Supervisor Stewart filed his request in good faith, the Court has little confidence that parties will use this stay for good faith negotiations and will instead see it as an opportunity to moot the Court’s Ruling through extended delay,” Blaney wrote.
The supervisors plan to appeal the ruling.
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