Outside counsel investigates 'theft' claims against Heap's office over voting equipment

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap said the county attorney and election staff working for the Board of Supervisors are stopping his office from taking control of equipment that rightfully belongs to the Recorder’s Office — but county budget documents tell a different story.

In an emergency court filing, the recorder’s attorney claimed that Pinal County sheriff deputies showed up at a staff member’s house over the weekend.

“On June 6, 2026, Pinal County sheriff’s deputies appeared unannounced at the home of MCRO Chief Information Officer Bryan Colby to inform him that he was under investigation for theft,” according to the court filing by attorney James Rogers.

In a statement, Supervisors Kate Brophy McGee and Debbie Lesko said security camera footage captured during a local Tempe election in March showed Colby and another employee wheeling a scanner out of the county’s central processing facility into an unmarked vehicle.

“The individuals returned to MCTEC with the scanner approximately 50 minutes later, after the county Elections director had alerted MCRO leadership to the incident,” they said. “It is unknown what transpired with the scanner during this period, other than that it was taken to MCRO executive offices.”

The board spent $70,000 to replace the scanner, which it said was “compromised.”

An investigation by the county’s Human Resources Department revealed Colby also removed “what appeared to be a handful of provisional ballot affidavit envelopes from a secure area of MCTEC,” the supervisors said.

“The investigation could not determine what, if anything, the CIO did with these materials, but a count the following day determined all ballots and envelopes had been accounted for,” they said.

Following the HR investigation, county leadership informed the Recorder’s Office of its findings and asked Mitchell for legal advice.

In a statement, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office only confirmed “an allegation was made” to Mitchell. She then appointed a special counsel to oversee the case due to a conflict of interest.

“MCAO is not involved in the investigation and has no further comment,” according to the county attorney’s statement.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is not involved in the investigation, according to spokesman Samuel Salzwedel. However, Salzwedel said an off-duty reserve deputy was hired by the special counsel assigned to the case.

Who owns what?

Heap argued the scanners in question belong to his office, claiming they were purchased with funds belonging solely to the Recorder’s Office.

He also argues that the machines were “acquired specifically for Early Voting Services, a function under the sole authority of the recorder.”

“Contrary to the premise of the investigation, what Mr. Colby is apparently accused of doing would have been entirely lawful: attempting to retrieve equipment belonging to the Recorder’s Office so it could be used to process ballots in the upcoming 2026 Primary Election,” Rogers, Heap’s attorney, wrote.

However, the supervisors say the scanner belongs to the Elections Department, which is controlled by the Board of Supervisors.

And Maricopa County’s 2023 budget shows the county allocated $116,376 from the Election Department budget for “Election’s Envelope scanners.”

And Jarrett, who oversees the Election Department for the board, is the one who presented the proposed expenditure to the board at a budget planning meeting in January 2022.

In Heap’s court filing, Rogers claims that Jarrett was presenting budget requests on behalf of both the Elections Department and Recorder’s Office.

However, then-County Recorder Stephen Richer presented his own budget requests at that same meeting before Jarrett spoke. And Richer never mentioned the ballot envelope scanner purchase.

The allegations

In the court filing, Rogers stops short of admitting Colby or other staff tried to move the scanners.

But he does state that staff from the Recorder’s Office were attempting to locate the two devices in question in order to repurpose them.

That came after supervisors denied Heap’s request to purchase an Agilis ballot sorting machine, which he said the office needed to ensure it could count all 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.

“Faced with the Board’s refusal to authorize the purchase of the Agilis machine, the MCRO had been investigating whether the two ImageTrac DS 1210 scanners the Recorder already owned could be repurposed to solve the same problem,” Rogers wrote. “That investigation — the act of a responsible public servant trying to ensure that voters’ ballots would be counted — is what the Board has characterized as theft and referred for criminal prosecution.”

Heap accused the board of engaging in retaliation after he won a legal victory in April in his ongoing fight with the supervisors over control of Maricopa County’s elections.

He is asking the judge overseeing that case to order the supervisors to hand over the scanners and prohibit the board “from initiating, advancing, or participating in any criminal investigation or prosecution” of recorder’s staff.

The board of supervisors did not respond to a request for comment.

Heap’s accusations are the latest in a series of spats between the recorder and Maricopa County supervisors, who are supposed to coordinate and cooperate with one another to administer elections — but have failed to reach an accord since Heap was elected in 2024.

Early voting in the upcoming July 21 primary elections begins at the end of June.