Josh Kelety, The Associated Press

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona is expected to have at least two competitive U.S. House races in November while Democrats will be defending their seats for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

Yet so far, it’s been the office running elections in the state’s most populous county that has commanded much of the spotlight.

Republican Justin Heap is an election skeptic who will be overseeing his first statewide election in Maricopa County. He has been engaged in a bitter legal feud with the county board of supervisors over election procedures, has put in place a controversial system for checking signatures on mail ballots and has run voter records through a federal system to check for noncitizens despite questions about its accuracy. Heap also has made overtures to the Trump administration in its quest for voter and election records.

His actions have drawn heated comments from members of that board, which splits election oversight with Heap’s office, and rebukes from the attorney general and secretary of state. A ruling this week in the legal case will give Heap more authority over election operations.

The turmoil has created an air of uncertainty about how the midterm elections will go in a county that has been a regular target of election conspiracy theorists and is pivotal for deciding statewide races in one of the nation’s most important political battlegrounds.

State Sen. Lauren Kuby, a Democrat who sits on a legislative elections committee and represents part of Phoenix, said the discord between the recorder and county board is sowing confusion and distrust.

“We’re one of the biggest counties in the country, and we have all of our election administrators fighting right now,” she said. “So I imagine if you’re a voter, you’re pretty confused and worried.”

The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which Heap runs, did not provide a response to questions despite multiple requests for comment. Heap did issue a statement in response to the court ruling, saying it “restores both the authority and the resources necessary for my office to do its job.”

A power struggle and heated accusations

Heap took office after defeating the incumbent in the 2024 Republican primary. He quickly began challenging the board of supervisors, which is majority Republican.

He sued them in June 2025 with the backing of America First Legal, a conservative group founded by Stephen Miller, now a deputy chief of staff in the White House. The lawsuit accused the board of negotiating an agreement with Heap’s predecessor to transfer money, information technology staff and certain election functions away from his office, including management of ballot drop boxes, processing of early arriving ballots and placement of sites used for early voting.

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ended up largely siding with Heap in the case. The board’s chair, Kate Brophy McGee, said the board will consider an appeal.

Before the ruling, supervisors had called Heap’s lawsuit frivolous and “full of falsehoods” as part a power struggle that at times has boiled over. A budget meeting in January devolved into heated accusations, with Supervisor Thomas Galvin, a Republican, saying Heap “continues to lie over and over again.” In a statement issued afterward, Heap dismissed the incident as a “juvenile temper tantrum.”

The board proposed a settlement earlier this year but did not receive a counteroffer from Heap.

New way to check voter signatures

Once in the job, Heap changed the process for checking voters’ signatures on their mail ballot envelopes.

The new procedure involves workers of both political parties reviewing signatures and more workers conducting additional reviews of signatures deemed to be questionable, Heap told the board during a meeting last fall.

But some elected officials and observers say they are concerned the new policy could lead to otherwise eligible ballots being rejected. Galvin said the rejection rate in the November 2025 local election was “huge” relative to past elections.

He has said he worries the new signature verification process is a “looming disaster” and expressed concern that many people “who legally and validly voted last November saw their ballots be rejected for arbitrary reasons.”

Heap says the new policy is faster and more secure. “In the end, the signatures either match or they don’t,” he told the board.

Checking citizenship, but accuracy is a question

Heap has promoted his office’s use of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE system to identify people on the voter rolls who may not be citizens.

The office said that through the system, it found “137 registered voters who are not U.S. citizens” and that 60 of those “voted in prior elections.” The Maricopa County attorney’s office has said it received 207 names from the recorder’s office to review for voting eligibility.

Voting by people who are not U.S. citizens is rare, and the SAVE system has been criticized by some election officials and experts who say it frequently identifies eligible voters as noncitizens. Arizona’s secretary of state, Democrat Adrian Fontes, said in an interview that the program is unreliable.

“The SAVE system is notoriously inaccurate,” he said. “You can’t depend on that to take somebody off the voter rolls or to start the removal proceeding.”

The recorder’s office announced its use of the SAVE system the same day Heap attended a news conference outside Phoenix, where then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was promoting a congressional bill that would require documented proof of citizenship to register and vote.

Fontes said his office has not received any additional information from the recorder about the alleged noncitizen voters and that the timing of the announcement makes it seem like “more of a headline grab than anything without more information.”

Fears of undermining confidence in elections

Heap’s presence at Noem’s February news conference was not the only instance when the recorder has appeared close with the Trump administration.

Correspondence obtained from the recorder’s office through a public records request shows a willingness to defer to the U.S. Department of Justice. This year the department seized ballots and other records related to the 2020 election from Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes Atlanta.

Meanwhile, the FBI subpoenaed similar Maricopa County records from the state Senate president.

Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote to Fontes, Heap and county officials in September seeking preservation of county election records. Heap replied the next day, stressing in his letter that his office is “committed to full cooperation with the Department of Justice as it conducts its investigation,” before adding: “We share your goal of safeguarding election integrity.”

As it has done in other states, the department sued Arizona months later for failing to comply with its request for detailed voter information.

The state’s attorney general, Democrat Kris Mayes, told a local media outlet that Heap is “trying to undermine Arizonans’ trust in our election system” and warned him not to provide voter lists to the federal government.

With the state’s July primary approaching, some observers are concerned that Heap’s feuding with the board and other actions could undermine public confidence in elections.

“The voters need to have a sense that this county is well-run, that the recorder and the board of supervisors have the best interest of every voter,” said Pinny Sheoran, state advocacy chair with the League of Women Voters of Arizona. “And that is frayed with this discord.”

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