Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap is asking a judge to block the Board of Supervisors from auditing the county’s election systems, the most recent development in a monthslong fight over control of county elections.
Late last week, Heap filed a motion seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the Board of Supervisors from giving a third-party contractor access to interconnected technology systems used by the board and recorder, which includes the voter registration database.
According to the motion, the county signed a contract with the Intersect Group to audit the shared technology tools, with a goal of dividing them into separate systems for both offices.
Heap claims the supervisors negotiated the agreement behind his back in violation of state laws that give him the authority to administer the county’s voter registration system, but the chair of the board said that’s just the latest example of the recorder bending the truth.
Maricopa County elections tug of war
In Arizona, counties are charged with administering most election-related duties, and the law divides up specific responsibilities between county boards of supervisors and recorders’ offices.
For example, boards of supervisors have the power to administer voting on Election Day, while the recorder’s responsibilities include early voting and voter registration. Shared services agreements have been used in Maricopa County for years in order to assign other duties that can be overseen by the board or recorder under state law.
Since taking office in January, Heap has claimed the board unlawfully took over election-related duties reserved for his office when it signed a new election services agreement with former Recorder Stephen Richer in 2024 — allegations the board denies.
Heap filed a lawsuit in June seeking to resolve the litany of disagreements between the Recorder and the Board, including who should control the Recorder’s IT staff.
Under the new elections agreement negotiated by Richer, the Recorder's IT staff was consolidated under a department supervised by the board. The board argued that change was made to approve efficiency, but Heap claimed it severely hampered his ability to perform the recorder’s duties, including administer early voting.
A not-so-clean break?
Heap is asking Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney to block the county from giving the Intersect Group access to the county’s voter registration database.
According to the contract, the contractor will perform “an assessment of the current Elections and Recorder Operations (ERO) technology suite of applications … in order to provide an evaluative report including recommendations for efficiency optimization and modernization.”
That includes an evaluation of the voter registration database and public records systems, according to the contract
In the latest legal filing, Heap’s attorney claims the contractor is supposed to be figuring out how to separate out tools in the existing system used by the recorder and the supervisors to carry out their election duties.
But Heap also claims the contract is actually a delay tactic designed to prevent a resolution of the dispute before the 2026 primary elections.
He claims the board began working on the new contract in May, but didn’t loop in the Recorder’s Office until after it signed an agreement in late September.
“Only after the contract was signed and the scope was fixed did the County notify the Recorder and set a ‘kickoff’ meeting within 24 hours, effectively ensuring that the Recorder’s expertise could not shape the process,” according to the lawsuit filed by attorney James Rogers with the America First Legal Foundation. “That ambush is not process — it is pretext.”
Thomas Galvin, the Republican chairman of the Board, said that’s not true.
In a statement, he pointed to several documents and public meetings indicating Heap’s office was aware of the planned audit.
Galvin claims Heap was informed on the scope of a planned audit in a meeting with Board Vice Chair Kate Brophy McGee on April 11. A shared services agreement proposed by the board on April 12 also includes language about a “comprehensive third party analysis of the IT infrastructure related to the Elections and Recorder (ERO) systems.”
At a public meeting on April 24, an attorney for the board said she believed Heap agreed with the plan following the April 11 briefing.
“I think that was one of the real benefits of that April 11 meeting, I think, is we were really able to talk about what the board was proposing, why it was necessary, and why ultimately, in the end, this would be beneficial to both sides, because then they could function with their own IT functions like every other elected does in Maricopa County,” Emily Craiger, an attorney for the board, said on April 24.
Galvin also cited a meeting between the recorder and the board on Jan. 29, in which Heap asks for the adoption of a formal process to resolve the dispute over IT staffing.
“I think that the best option would be to do an audit, decide which IT members both sides needs, and split those teams so both sides have people that they are going to respond to,” Heap said in the meeting.
According to the lawsuit, it will take the Intersect Group 14 weeks to “evaluate” how to divide the systems for the board and recorder. But Rogers argues the county can perform those duties much quicker than that in-house, claiming the staff members who originally designed the system still work at the county.
“The Board’s assertion that a complex, months-long audit is necessary to separate the IT infrastructure is demonstrably false. … These two individuals are intimately acquainted with the system architecture. They already know how the ERO and VRAS work and could develop a method to separate the functions needed by the Board and the Recorder’s Office,” Rogers wrote.
However, the board has argued a more thorough analysis is needed.
“If we make any changes in our IT infrastructure related to elections, we need a thoughtful plan for how those changes will be made,” Galvin said in a statement. “Planning must be done well, without delays, security risks, or disruptions in elections services. It is important for the Board to carefully review IT systems, just like any public entity or private company should.”
The legal dispute between Heap and the board is scheduled to go to trial in January, though Heap is asking Blaney to act immediately on his request for a restraining order.
As of Wednesday morning, Blaney had not ruled on the request to block the Intersect Group from accessing the county’s election systems.
