The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors’ ongoing dispute with the county recorder hit another rough spot this week over the idea of mailing ballots to voters who didn’t request them.
Arizona will have a special election to replace late Democratic Congressman Raúl Grijalva on July 15.
On Monday, the board unanimously adopted a plan for the election but rejected a section proposed by Republican Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap to send mail-in ballots to certain voters in Congressional District 7 who aren’t on the “active early voter list.”
The election will only be for voters in Congressional District 7, which spans portions of Tolleson, Yuma and Tucson.
Heap’s Chief of Staff Sam Stone told the board that the voters they want to send ballots to are in two particularly remote precincts where they would have to drive significantly far to get to a voting location.
Those voters are in precincts where they’d have to drive more than two hours to a voting center and are located primarily south of Maricopa city, according to Stone. He said they’d still have the option to vote in person.
“They will have the option still, to simply discard that ballot and go into a polling location, should they choose to vote in person, but they will all have that opportunity to simply receive that ballot and drop in the mail and have their vote count,” Stone said.
Supervisors questioned the legality of sending mail-in ballots to voters who didn’t request them.
“Where in statute does it say that,” Republican Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee asked. “I thought it was an absolute no-no.”
Stone said his office was assured by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office that the proposal would be legal.
But on Tuesday, the Maricopa County Attorney wrote a letter to Heap and the board refuting what Stone said:
“That did not happen: no attorney from my Office gave such approval. In fact, no one from the Recorder’s Office requested advice from any attorney in my Office on this topic, and no attorney in my Office was aware that the Recorder’s Office intended to do this. As explained below, it is unlawful to mail ballots to voters who have neither requested them nor signed up to be on the AEVL, unless the election is a “mail ballot election” (which the CD-7 Special Election is not),” Mitchell wrote.
Republican Supervisor Debbie Lesko also expressed concern with the idea, noting that Democrats have supported it in the past and Republicans fought against it.
“I don't want to set any type of precedent to go down that path,” she said.
The board’s chair, Republican Supervisor Thomas Galvin, said sending those mail-in ballots would have opened the county up to controversy in the way it handled the election.
“I think it's just really dangerous from a policy perspective to mail ballots to people who are not expecting them nor asked for them. We have a very good system in Arizona in terms of access. If people want to be on the active early voting list, they can affirmatively choose to do so,” he said.
Galvin also posted on social media, calling out Heap by name for trying to “set a bad precedent of bad election ideas.”
Heap’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
As a former state lawmaker, Heap once backed legislation that would have banned voting by mail.
In 2020, the Maricopa County recorder was Adrian Fontes, now Arizona’s Democratic secretary of State.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fontes pushed to send all eligible voters mail-in ballots for the Democratic Presidential Preference Election, regardless of whether they were on the active early voter list. But the Maricopa County Superior Court granted a temporary restraining order sought by then-Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich to stop Fontes.
Supervisor Steve Gallardo, the board’s lone Democrat, asked at the end of the board’s meeting what the plan is for the remote voters, but it wasn’t discussed any further.
The board has been at odds with Heap over demands he’s made regarding his role as recorder and what duties fall to his office rather than the board as it relates to running elections.
Heap has threatened to sue the board several times, but has not done so yet.
