The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Recorder are at odds over plans to establish early voting locations.
Maricopa County Supervisor Mark Stewart, who has been an independent voice within the board, addressed two public concerns with this dispute in a press release issued on Monday.
The concerns relate to the delegation of early voting responsibilities under Arizona law, and the timeline for finalizing early voting locations, staffing, and logistics. Stewart disclosed that conversations between the board and recorder’s officer were underway, even with the very public back-and-forth between the two bodies.
“Regardless of the back-and-forth or expressed frustrations from the Recorder’s office and the Board Chair, we are making progress and working together. It may not be perfect, but it is happening,” said Stewart.
The final week of February marked a particularly fraught period in a long-standing dispute between the board and recorder over election duties. At the center of it all was the disputed existence of a spreadsheet containing alternative early voting locations.
Last week Recorder Justin Heap publicly disparaged the proposed early voting location sites delivered to him by the board. His criticisms accused the board of potentially disenfranchising voters, prompting an immediate response from Board Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko. The pair said Heap had misinterpreted and failed to adequately review the materials given to him.
1. Heap demands early in-person voting. 2. We give it to him. 3. We send Heap list of over 160 sites he can use or modify. 3. Heap apparently doesn't open all site spreadsheet tabs and rejects "our plan". 4. We didn't even send him a plan…just a list of voting sites. 5. 🥺 https://t.co/cl7E8tGM3F
Heap disputed this narrative of his review. He accused the board of “lying to voters yet again,” in addition to demanding that he approve their early voting proposal.
🚨 MARICOPA COUNTY SUPERVISORS’ FLAWED EARLY VOTING PLAN UPDATE
This week I shared my response to the Board’s demand that I approve their poorly designed, proposed early voting plan.
The cliff notes version? The Board is lying to voters yet again.
— Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap (@azjustinheap) February 28, 2026
According to Stewart’s press release from Monday, none of the early voting locations have been approved yet. The sites under discussion remain proposals.
Early voting locations were approved and released by mid-June during the 2024 election cycle.
This year, the election schedule is slightly more condensed. The governor and legislature approved a modification of the election dates to accommodate military and overseas voters.
Voter registration ends June 22, early voting begins June 24, and the primary election day is scheduled for the end of July.
Even with this adjusted timeline, Stewart says Heap has “ample time” to provide feedback on the proposed voting locations.
“We have a reasonable window of time to gather the Recorder’s feedback and a commitment to work collaboratively to refine location recommendations and ensure the selections are operationally sound and accessible to voters,” said Stewart.
While the rest of the supervisors have operated virtually in lockstep in their approach to the recorder, Stewart has generally taken a position independent of the rest of the board.
Lately, the supervisor is urging his colleagues to review the proposed early voting locations in an open public session to gather constituent input. Stewart advised he would be recommending a public discussion date in which Heap may participate.
“Voters deserve to see the decision-making process, understand the rationale behind site selection, and hear directly from both the Board and the Recorder,” said Stewart. “Transparency strengthens trust and improves outcomes.”
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The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) issued its polling place map for early voting, but the Maricopa County Recorder says its uneven distribution may disenfranchise voters.
Recorder Justin Heap issued a letter on Thursday to the MCBOS expressing these concerns. Heap said he doesn’t support the plan.
“I have serious concerns that the proposed early voting plan [the Board] provided makes voting inconvenient and inaccessible for a large number of Maricopa County voters,” said Heap. “I cannot support a plan that does not provide all voters a reasonably equal opportunity to vote. I remain willing to work in good faith. But cooperation does not mean rubber-stamping a plan my office had no role in building, and which fails to adequately protect the voters.”
I have serious concerns that the proposed early voting plan [the Board] provided makes voting inconvenient and inaccessible for a large number of Maricopa County voters.
I cannot support a plan that does not provide all voters a reasonably equal opportunity to vote.
— Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap (@azjustinheap) February 27, 2026
According to the map, areas with higher population counts have significantly less early voting sites compared to areas with lower population counts. As an example, Tempe (population 180,000) has three designated early voting sites while Mesa (population 500,000) has one.
That Mesa voting site is not in the center of the city; it is located in the southeast corner, meaning most voters would have to travel over 10 miles to reach the location.
“That kind of imbalance makes voting more difficult in large portions of the county and risks leaving a substantial percentage of county voters without reasonable access to early voting,” said Heap. “Elections should be fair and accessible for everyone, regardless of where they live.”
In addition to those alleged troubles, Recorder Heap said that “no staff, funding, equipment, or planning authority” has been transferred to him by MCBOS as of the letter. Per Heap, the MCBOS Elections Director, Scott Jarrett, delivered to him an early voting plan on Monday developed without the involvement of his office and asked for an approval by Friday.
“Maricopa County voters made clear they seek us to have collaboration based on the statutory division of duties, rather than artificial deadlines or public narratives that obscure the facts and cause voter confusion,” said Heap.
NEW: BOS sets a 2/27 deadline for Recorder to say if he intends to partner with @maricopavote to provide in-person early voting in 2026. His decision will have a big impact on voters, candidates, ballot measures. Statement below from Chair @katemcgeeaz and Vice Chair @DebbieLeskopic.twitter.com/igMJLMyVU3
Arizona law requires the board to provide funds and resources to the recorder’s office.
In response, Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko issued a joint statement dismissing his claims as “misleading and disappointing.” McGee and Lesko said the board would continue to plan for Election Day regardless of Heap’s rejection of the plan.
“We offered to help him because he’s never done [early in-person voting] before, and time is of the essence,” read the joint statement. “We even gave him a list of more than 160 voting centers he could use or modify, but we can’t force him to accept our assistance.”
The board issued a letter on Tuesday to Heap asking whether he would accept Jarrett’s plan for early in-person voting. According to their letter, the plan opposed by Heap maintained consistency with practices implemented by Heap’s predecessors.
“The Board of Supervisors strongly supports maintaining a comprehensive early in-person program consistent with prior practices,” stated the letter.
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The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has sent a letter to Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap regarding preparations for in-person early voting for the upcoming July Primary Election, urging cooperation to ensure sufficient voting locations, staff, and equipment are in place.
In a joint statement dated Feb. 24, 2026, Board Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko said the board delivered the letter to Recorder Heap now that his office “oversees that important function.”
The supervisors emphasized that “big decisions need to be made in short order” to guarantee that in-person early voting is adequately staffed and resourced for the 27-day early voting period prescribed by state law.
The letter requests that Heap provide the “same level of service that Maricopa County voters have come to expect in past years, when the Board oversaw in-person early voting.” The supervisors wrote that this includes a “large number of sites spread out evenly and fairly across our county” during the early voting period.
NEW: BOS sets a 2/27 deadline for Recorder to say if he intends to partner with @maricopavote to provide in-person early voting in 2026. His decision will have a big impact on voters, candidates, ballot measures. Statement below from Chair @katemcgeeaz and Vice Chair @DebbieLeskopic.twitter.com/igMJLMyVU3
Brophy McGee and Lesko also asked whether the recorder would collaborate with the board’s elections department, which they described as “staffed, resourced, and experienced in this area.”
According to the Board’s Feb. 24 statement, the letter followed a court filing by Recorder Heap in which he indicated he was willing to cooperate on logistical issues. Supervisors also said they had sent a staff-level communication outlining key decisions that must be made to meet statutory deadlines.
The board approved a requested $550,000 budget increase for the Recorder’s Office, earmarked for signature verification efforts. “Signature verification is under the complete and total control of the recorder,” Brophy McGee stated in a press release on Wednesday regarding the $550,000 increase. “While we have questions about the recorder’s new process, we will proceed with the recorder’s budget requests to ensure sufficient resources are in place by the 2026 primary. Our top goal is fair and secure elections.”
The supervisors gave Heap until Friday to respond to the board’s letter so that preparations can proceed in advance of statutory deadlines for the July Primary. The statement concludes that if the recorder does not respond, the board will assume he can manage in-person early voting “without our help.”
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office recovered $500,000 in overcharges from the federal postal agency.
County Recorder Justin Heap reported during Wednesday’s board of supervisors meeting that the United States Postal Service (USPS) had overcharged Maricopa County for “several years,” to the tune of $500,000. The recorder advised the supervisors that their office worked with USPS to recoup those lost funds.
“We discovered the United States Postal Services has been overcharging Maricopa County for quite a few years. We have worked with them, we will be receiving a refund of $500,000 from USPS to help defray the costs of everything going forward,” said Heap. “We used to give awards in this county for people who save the county money, now we get subpoenas.”
$500,000 makes up about two percent of the recorder’s budget under the 2026 fiscal year budget. It amounts to a little over one percent of the 2025 fiscal year budget.
The revelation of the recovered $500,000 emerged during a special meeting called by the board of supervisors requiring Heap to testify on the administration of his office and claims of disenfranchisement — a meeting which Heap made clear he opposed.
“This reaches to the level of administrative interference. We’re in the middle of an election, I’ve had to pull certified election officers off of this election to spend time compiling this report and these documents to comply with this demand,” said Heap.
Heap brought the report which he said contained “thousands of pages of documents” providing evidence of his office’s administration. The recorder said the compilation of this report strained his office due to the constrained timeline of less than a week.
As to the disenfranchisement claims that emerged during Maricopa County Superior Court testimony last month, Heap said the recorder’s office has struggled in previous elections to complete provisional ballots under the condensed time frame. In order to solve that problem, Heap asked the board for an Agilis sorting machine. That sorter would cost just under $600,000.
The recorder said relying on Runbeck for provisional processing wouldn’t be advisable considering their company doesn’t connect to the county’s voter database, and the requirement of transporting the ballots to Runbeck would expose the county to chain of custody complications.
Heap said disenfranchisement hasn’t occurred “so far this year” under his administration, and that claims made during court testimony were referencing past administrations. One of the staff members who cited disenfranchisement during their testimony, chief of staff Sam Stone, retained his own counsel.
Supervisor Thomas Galvin asked Heap to explain why the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) said they had not approved universal mail-in ballots during last year’s congressional district 7 special election, when the recorder’s office said they had.
Heap rejected the characterization of those mail ballots. He said his office only made a proposal to send ballots to a selection of 3,000 voters who lacked a polling place, but didn’t act on it.
“This proposal was not even put in our plan to the MCAO, and we never implemented it, I’m not sure why the board has continued to hang up on a proposal that was never actually implemented,” said Heap.
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The Arizona Republican Party is picking sides in the ongoing spat between the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and County Recorder Justin Heap.
The party’s new chair, Sergio Arellano, issued a press release on Tuesday commending Supervisor Mark Stewart for speaking out against the rest of the board for their posturing to oust Heap from office.
“I appreciate those Republicans who are able to ignore the rancor being generated by those outside the process, and who are willing to listen to the voices of those of us who want a solution that unites Republicans behind the proposition that Arizona voters deserve a process that respects their choices, and that the power of the people, exercised through their vote, prevails and is honored,” said Arellano.
Arellano advised voters to focus on the merits of policy over the noise of personal conflicts in the matter; the chair agreed with Stewart that Heap should have full restoration of elections administration duties under the Shared Services Agreement (SSA).
“Ignore the fake news and those who are intent on whipping up hysteria to further their own personal ambition, but we as a Party must deliver on real and effective reform and restore full faith in our elections,” said Arellano. “Recorder Heap must be allowed to do his job and then he must do it properly. The same goes for our County Supervisors. I am grateful to Supervisor Stewart for seeking a path that accomplishes all of this and encourage everyone involved to follow his lead and reach an agreement of which we might all be proud.”
The board ordered Heap to appear on Wednesday to provide a report and testify on his administration and allegations of voter disenfranchisement made by his office.
It is the latest escalation in the public spat between the two over who has primary control over elections via the SSA. The current SSA, all but gutting the recorder’s office of elections duties, was put in place by a “lame duck” recorder, Stephen Richer, and board majority in their final months in office. After Heap failed to convince the board to reverse course on that SSA, Heap sued last summer.
Supervisor Stewart announced on Monday that he sought outside legal counsel to negotiate with Heap over the SSA, since the board and recorder’s office appear to have hit a stalemate.
Stewart retained counsel after failing to receive a response to his request to postpone Wednesday’s meeting from Chair Kate Brophy McGee. The supervisor said all members of the board ought to have additional time to consult with counsel about negotiations with Heap.
“My counsel requires additional time to fully evaluate the issues raised, assess the scope and legal basis for the required direct report, and advise me accordingly. Proceeding before that review is complete would not allow me to participate in the discussion or any potential vote with the preparation and confidence that such a consequential action demands,” said Stewart. “Out of respect for the institution, the Recorder’s Office, and most importantly, the residents we serve, I believe it is prudent to delay consideration of this item until all members of the Board have had sufficient opportunity to consult with counsel and fully assess the implications.”
A Call for a Pause and Clarity
This morning I sent a letter to the Board Chair requesting we postpone Wednesday’s discussion to allow time for full staff participation and so the Board can meaningfully review the sworn report, Shared Services Agreement, and signature… pic.twitter.com/ITiVfuK8Gx
— Mark Stewart Maricopa County Supervisor District 1 (@MarkStewart_AZ) February 14, 2026
Stewart also denounced the possibility of Heap’s removal should he refuse to show on Wednesday.
