Arizona Judge Hands Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap More Election Power Ahead of Midterms

A County Election Fight Gets a Verdict

Since Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney filed his ruling Thursday, July 9, and it hit the public docket Friday, July 10, Arizona's largest county has a clearer answer to a question that's dogged it for a year: who actually runs elections there, the recorder or the board of supervisors?

Blaney sided mostly with Republican Recorder Justin Heap. He wrote that the county's board of supervisors, also majority Republican, "acted unlawfully and exceeded its statutory authority by seizing the Recorder's personnel, systems and equipment and refusing to return them," according to WSLS.

The ruling restores Heap's control over in-person early voting, along with IT staff and funding the board had redirected under an agreement struck with his predecessor, Stephen Richer, whom Heap defeated in the 2024 GOP primary. The board keeps authority over Election Day polling locations and hiring poll workers.

How We Got Here

Heap sued the board in June 2025 with backing from America First Legal, the group founded by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, according to Courthouse News. He accused supervisors of negotiating a backdoor deal that gutted his office's authority over drop boxes and early voting sites before he took over the recorder's office after winning the 2024 election.

Board Chairwoman Kate Brophy McGee, also a Republican, called the lawsuit frivolous before the ruling. Afterward, she said the board "provided Recorder Heap the resources and staffing needed to fulfill his statutory duties" and will "explore all options, including an expeditious appeal," per WSLS.

Heap called the decision "a clear and decisive victory for the rule of law and for the voters of Maricopa County," saying it "restores both the authority and the resources necessary for my office to do its job."

The Signature System and the Noncitizen Check

Heap has also put a new signature-verification system for mail ballots in place and run voter records through a federal database to screen for noncitizens, according to Courthouse News, despite unresolved questions about that database's accuracy.

Signature matching and citizenship verification are standard, mainstream tools states use to keep rolls clean. Voters showing ID or having signatures checked is no different than the identification required for opening a bank account or boarding a plane.

The fair counter-concern, raised by the board and Democratic officials, is that consolidating both the verification process and the drop-box/early-voting infrastructure under one elected official without the board's oversight makes it harder to catch mistakes or bias in how that system runs. No evidence in these sources shows Heap's signature process or the federal database check has produced wrongful rejections or improper removals. That's an open question, not a settled one, and it's exactly the kind of design tension critics want addressed with clearer statutory limits on which office controls what.

State Sen. Lauren Kuby, a Democrat from Phoenix who sits on a legislative elections committee, said the infighting itself is the problem regardless of who's right on the law. "We're one of the biggest counties in the country, and we have all of our election administrators fighting right now," she told the Associated Press, as carried by Courthouse News. "So I imagine if you're a voter, you're pretty confused and worried."

Why the Stakes Are Higher Than Usual

Maricopa County will help decide at least two competitive U.S. House races and statewide contests for governor, attorney general and secretary of state this November, according to Courthouse News.

The governor's race adds pressure. Cook Political Report shifted Arizona to "lean Democratic" in July 2026, and RealClearPolitics polling averages from November 2025 through May 2026 show Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs leading Republican Andy Biggs roughly 44.3 percent to 39.3 percent, according to Newsweek. A Noble Predictive Insights poll from May 5-7, 2026, of 996 registered voters found Hobbs ahead 41 percent to 37 percent, with prediction markets pricing a Democratic win between 77 and 81 percent.

The unresolved question is whether the board's appeal, which McGee says supervisors are actively weighing, reaches an appellate court before ballots go out this fall. If it doesn't, Heap's office runs early voting operations in the state's most populous county under a legal framework settled by one trial judge's ruling, with no higher court yet weighing in.