Special prosecutor appointed in Maricopa election equipment dispute
PHOENIX — Two Maricopa County election staff, including a top aide to County Recorder Justin Heap, removed a ballot scanner and provisional ballot envelopes from a secure location while votes for a special election were still being counted, according to videos released by the county this summer. The staff returned the equipment within about an hour.
Heap said there was nothing nefarious about the removal. He said his staff was taking back equipment his office had paid for, alongside empty, voided ballot envelopes. He said the scanner was not in use during the election.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, a body whose members are almost all Republicans, disputed Heap’s account. Members said the scanner belonged to the board and that its removal from the premises meant it was compromised. The board spent $70,000 to replace it.
The county attorney has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the incident and decide whether to file criminal charges, officials said.
The incident is the latest flashpoint in a deteriorating relationship between the recorder, a Republican, and the board, whose five members are almost all Republican. The two sides have clashed for over a year over the division of election responsibilities in the state’s largest county. Each side has accused the other of lying and questioned the other’s ability to run a reliable election.
Heap accused the board of manufacturing a scandal to hurt him in a legal battle he is waging against them. “To me, it looks to me like he’s flailing,” Heap said of Republican Supervisor Thomas Galvin, accusing him and board colleagues of becoming “increasingly desperate to try to hold on to authority they don’t have.”
Galvin said in an interview he was amazed at “how people can serve in elected office and just lie with ease, and I would put Justin Heap at the top of that list.” He compared the removal to taking a machine outside and bringing it back, saying Heap and his allies would be “the first people to be on the streets screaming with pitchforks” if a board member had done the same.
Heap came into office promising to address election-fraud concerns after his predecessor, a Republican, sided with the board in defending the accuracy of the 2020 election results. Biden won Arizona by just over 10,000 votes, with Maricopa County proving critical to his victory. The board defended the results. Heap has declined to say whether he believes Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, but he also does not dispute them.
The dispute over responsibilities has played out in court. Heap won a case in April that expanded his authority, but an appeals court paused the decision because the changes came too close to an election. Heap is now appealing the case to the Arizona Supreme Court. Former Recorder Helen Purcell, a Republican who served for nearly three decades, filed an amicus brief siding with the board, arguing that changes so close to an election violated the so-called Purcell principle, which warns against making such changes near Election Day.
Justice Department officials are in possession of digital files from the 2021 Maricopa County audit ordered by the Republican-led state legislature. The audit, conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based company with no federal accreditation, reconfirmed Biden’s win.
Voters in Maricopa County will help determine control of the U.S. House and will vote in competitive statewide races this fall. With primaries weeks away and early voting already under way, the feud risks deepening distrust in the accuracy of the election process.