Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap (second from right) meets with the Board of Supervisors (not pictured) on Jan. 29, 2025, to discuss his budget requests. Heap is suing supervisors, saying they failed to negotiate election duties. Screengrab of Maricopa County Board of Supervisors
Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap is suing the county’s supervisors, claiming they are illegally trying to seize control of the county’s elections.
The lawsuit, which Trump-aligned group America First Legal filed Thursday on Heap’s behalf, claims that the supervisors “engaged in an unlawful attempt to seize near-total control over the administration of elections.”
It specifically states that Heap wants control over the information technology staff that manages the county’s voter registration system, and that the board has prohibited him from accessing certain areas of the elections building that he needs entry to for early voting purposes.
The legal action comes after a months-long feud over control of elections between Heap, a Republican who took office in January, and the Republican-controlled board. The dissension has cast doubt on the officials’ ability to work together to run the elections in the closely scrutinized swing county.
Maricopa supervisors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In addition, the county attorney has the power to appoint outside counsel for county offices that need it, and a spokesperson for County Attorney Rachel Mitchell said she did not appoint America First Legal to represent Heap. Heap’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the representation.
Contentious negotiations spanned months
Under Arizona law, recorders typically run voter registration and early voting while supervisors oversee Election Day voting. There’s room for each county to decide specifically who does what, but the two sides need to work together for a smooth election.
During the campaign, Heap claimed that the county’s elections were a laughingstock and declared election integrity as his signature issue. Upon taking office in January, he rejected the existing agreement between supervisors and the recorder’s office governing how elections were run, saying the prior recorder and supervisors had taken away some of the duties assigned to him under law. He has chastised supervisors since then, claiming that they’ve failed to properly negotiate over a new agreement.
The supervisors have consistently said that they have negotiated in good faith with Heap. A few of the supervisors had run on election integrity, as well, and all said when first taking office that they hoped they could work together.
But the relationship soon turned contentious.
After months of negotiating, the two sides came close to an agreement in April. But Heap then asked Mitchell to authorize new outside counsel, Andrew Gould of the firm Holtzman Vogel, signaling that he wanted more changes. Mitchell appointed Gould that month.
Supervisors held a public meeting at that point detailing all of the back-and-forth their office has had with Heap’s staff over the agreement, publicly releasing emails.
On May 15, Heap sent supervisors a draft agreement that made dozens of additional changes. That draft gave him control over early in-person voting, which for years has been run by the supervisors and their elections director. He also asked for control of the IT team that can perform management tasks on the voter roll system.
Supervisors at a May 19 budget meeting said his draft plan would cost the county $15 million more because it would have required changes to the system to allow Heap to set up in-person early voting separately from Election Day voting, which would still be done by the supervisors.
Supervisors didn’t put that additional money in the budget, but at that meeting Supervisor Mark Stewart still seemed hopeful for a deal.
“We are going to get to a phase where we have a common-sense solution,” he said.
Heap’s lawsuit says that supervisors rejected his May 15 proposal on May 23.
This post was originally authored and published by Jen Fifield/Votebeat from AZ Mirror via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
