Maricopa County supervisors, recorder continue to fight over election control

With the upcoming primary season quickly approaching, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Recorder Justin Heap appear no closer to resolving a legal battle over who controls the county’s elections.

Just last week, the board voted to give Heap control of early in-person voting, one of the recorder’s demands that led him to file suit against the board last summer. That includes administering locations where Maricopa County voters can cast their ballots in the weeks before Election Day.

Board Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko offered to coordinate early in-person voting with the recorder for the upcoming primary election.

“We believe this coordination will provide voters with the best possible in-person experience and will make the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars — and you previously testified in court that you are willing to cooperate with our staff on these issues,” they wrote in a letter on Tuesday.

The Maricopa County Elections Department, which is overseen by the supervisors, sent Heap’s staff a breakdown of the steps it has taken so far to prepare for that election, including a list of potential early voting sites.

“I have given my team direction to pause on all in-person early voting preparations,” Elections Director Scott Jarrett wrote, asking for feedback on those plans by Feb. 27.

Rejection

In response, Heap said he has “serious concerns” about the plans the board sent over, according to a letter released by his office.

Heap said those plans included too many locations in places like Tempe and the West Valley and too few locations in Mesa. A statement released by the Recorder’s Office included a map of potential early voting sites that illustrated the disparity.

“There is no conceivable justification for such a huge disparity in how residents of Tempe and Mesa will be treated under Mr. Jarrett’s current plan. Many other similar disparities exist,” Heap wrote.

However, it appears Heap or his staff did not look at all of the voting location options sent over by the supervisors.

Jarrett’s email to the Recorder’s Office included a spreadsheet listing locations that had agreed to host early voting. That corresponds with the image included in Heap’s email.

But the spreadsheet included additional tabs with more potential locations that had not yet confirmed whether they are willing to accommodate early voting.

In their own statement, Brophy McGee and Lesko said they provided a list of 160 potential early voting sites. For comparison, the county operated around 50 and 60 early voting sites in 2024, according to Jarrett’s email.

“At this point, the county has not signed any contracts with the early voting locations, so the Recorder can decide which early voting locations he would like to use/change/add,” Jarrett wrote.

Brophy McGee and Lesko rejected Heap’s argument that they sent him a flawed plan, arguing they were just providing suggestions he could accept or reject.

“We offered to help him because he's never done it before, and time is of the essence … but we can't force him to accept our assistance,” they wrote. “His response to our letter was misleading and disappointing.”

The Recorder’s Office did not respond to questions about whether it looked at all tabs in the sheet sent by Jarrett.

Sky Schaudt/KJZZ

Ramifications

Arizona law divides election administration duties between county boards of supervisors and recorders. Historically, both sides sign on to election plans — called shared services agreements — to clearly draw lines detailing who’s responsible for what.

But the board and Heap have yet to reach such an agreement since the new board and recorder took office in January 2025.

That led to confusion and public fighting amongst the county’s top election officials, culminating in Heap’s lawsuit, which is ongoing in Maricopa County Superior Court.

The lack of an agreement could have a real impact on the upcoming elections, because both sides need to work together to ensure operations run smoothly for the millions of voters in the nation’s fourth largest county.

“The Recorder cannot run a countywide early voting program without the funding, contracts, staffing and equipment that remains under board control,” Heap wrote.

But both sides continue to accuse the other of standing in the way of a deal.

“The Board has also repeatedly frustrated my ability to secure an adequate number of conveniently located polling places for early voting. For the past year, the Board repeatedly claimed, both publicly and in court, that it alone controls in-person early voting,” Heap wrote.

He said, even though the board voted to give him back control of early voting, it has not given him the resources he needs to actually administer those operations.

The board, meanwhile, says it’s Heap who won’t sign on the dotted line.

They claim the two sides were in agreement on “90%” of the details of a new shared services agreement as far back as April 2025 but that Heap has repeatedly stalled negotiations.

“I do believe that the board has bent over backwards to make good faith appeals and good faith offers to work with the Recorder's Office on all of these items, especially in-person early voting,” Supervisor Thomas Galvin said last week.

The primary election is July 21.