Maricopa County supervisors accuse Recorder Heap of blocking deal to end legal fight

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap gave testimony to the Board of Supervisors about claims of voter disenfranchisement coming out of his office in a meeting that featured more verbal sparring than new information about the county’s election systems.

Heap appeared before the board after the supervisors voted last week to require him to prepare a report that detailed the disenfranchisement claims and other election issues.

Hear Wayne Schutsky on The Show with host Lauren Gilger

Listen • 7:36

And he accused the board of using the meeting to meddle with his office after it gave him less than a week to compile the thousands of documents in the report, which required reassigning staff who were working on administering Tempe’s upcoming city council election.

“I don't think that it is inappropriate for me to say that this reaches to the level of administrative interference,” Heap said.

But the board defended its decision, arguing it's been trying to get Heap to answer questions since he took office over a year ago.

Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee, the board chair, said that information is needed as both sides prepare to administer the upcoming 2026 elections.

“Elections are incredibly, incredibly complicated and the planning takes months and even years,” she said. “It involves a human factor. A lot can go wrong very, very quickly. And I'm very grateful we now appear to have the information we have been requesting for quite some time.”

The recorder did not provide much in the way of new information at the meeting, mostly addressing issues he has spoken about in past meetings with the board.

That included claims from his staff that a lack of resources and changes to state law has led some legitimate votes to go uncounted in Maricopa County.

Those claims stem from a budget request made by Heap’s office to the board — an ask for a new machine to help it process “provisional ballots,” which are given to voters who can’t be immediately verified at the polls for a variety of reasons, including not providing valid identification.

In court, Heap’s staff claimed in past elections the county did not have enough time to process all provisional ballots, and that a $595,000 Agilis sorting machine would help speed up the process.

“We would have made the substantial changes to one or the other to bring this in to not disenfranchise voters, which is happening now because of the length of time of the provisional process,” Sam Stone, the recorder’s chief of staff, said in court when asked about concerns there was not enough space to fit the machine at county facilities.

But Heap contradicted Stone’s sworn testimony, for the second time, when he appeared before the board on Wednesday, saying there is no disenfranchisement happening now.

“I think what he meant to say was that it had happened in the past, and we're making sure that doesn't happen,” Heap said. “I certainly have spoken to my staff. We have not seen any evidence that, so far this year, that this lack of an Agilis machine has caused any disenfranchisement.”

Heap, who took office in January 2025, did not cite any evidence that voter disenfranchisement took place under previous recorders due to the issue, and former Recorder Stephen Richer has denied those allegations.

Stone did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy.

The silence is deafening

The conflict between Heap and the board stems from yearlong negotiations over a “shared services agreement.” Under Arizona law, boards of supervisors and county recorders share election duties, and historically, they sign such agreements to provide clarity when who holds a responsibility is unclear under the law.

Heap sued the board in June 2025 after both sides failed to come to an agreement.

Those negotiations appear to have stalled out — but not because the two sides are far apart on the details.

“I don't think it's too much to say the settlement negotiations are dead,” Kory Langhofer, the board’s attorney, said.

But the board has argued that litigation was avoidable and that the two sides were close to an agreement as far back as April 2025.

“We seem to be in agreement on 95% and are only discussing minor details on how to effectively split up the IT team,” according to an April 11 text message from Heap to Supervisor Debbie Lesko that Lesko read aloud in the meeting on Wednesday.

Kory Langhofer, the supervisors’ attorney, said he sent the most recent settlement offer to Heap’s attorney on Feb. 12.

“We're really close, honestly, like what we were proposing, what they're talking about, is really close,” Langhofer said.

That offer included an agreement to give Heap back his IT staff and return power to administer early voting — two of Heap’s top demands.

But Heap’s attorney refused to respond to the offer in writing, Langhofer claimed, instead offering a verbal counter offer similar to the board’s proposal.

“My perception was that he was reading to me their deal points, but he wouldn't put it in writing. And his request to me was that I should put in writing his deal points and send it back to Heap as though it were your offer,” Langhofer told the supervisors. “I said, ‘it's not their offer. You've got their offer. It's in writing.’”

In the absence of a deal, supervisors took the unusual step of approving a resolution adopting several of the policies included in their deal, including agreeing to split up IT staff and give Heap control of the early voting, with some conditions.

“We have given him what he wants but yet he has not responded, which is very frustrating to me; I don't understand it,” said Lesko, who voted for Heap in 2024. “And so this is what we did. We're going to vote on this resolution, which basically mirrors, for the most part, the last offer we gave to him, and so we're going to live by our side of the bargain.”

That does not completely resolve the lawsuit, though.

Langhofer said there are still some outstanding issues that must be agreed to by both parties, including a disagreement over who should oversee poll worker training.

The Recorder’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Much ado

The board meeting was packed with Heap supporters who were concerned the supervisors would try to remove Heap from office after several activists and close Heap allies took to social media to make the claims in the days before the meeting.

The law cited by the board to compel the recorder’s testimony allows the board to remove county officials who do not comply.

However, Heap did agree to appear before the board as requested. And before the meeting, Supervisors Debbie Lesko and Mark Stewart both said they would not support using the law to remove Heap.

Brophy McGee, the board chair, also indicated removing Heap wasn’t on the table.

“Twitter doesn't make it true,” she said. “It really does not.”