PHOENIX—Maricopa County was the locus of baseless allegations that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Just four months before this November’s pivotal midterm elections, the issue is far from settled.
In videos released this summer by Maricopa County, two election staff—one of them a top aide to the Maricopa County recorder—removed a ballot envelope scanner and provisional ballot envelopes from a secure location while votes for a special election were still being tallied. They returned the equipment within an hour.
The incident is the latest flashpoint in an increasingly bitter fight between the mostly Republican elected officials who run elections in Arizona’s biggest county. The clash has rekindled a debate many Arizona voters had hoped to move on from.
Voters here could help determine the balance of the U.S. House and will vote in some of the most competitive statewide races in the country. With weeks to go until the state’s primaries and early voting already under way, the feud threatens to sow further distrust in election accuracy ahead of the midterms.
On one side is a majority Republican board who have doubled down on their opposition to claims of fraud. On the other is a Trump ally who has been boosted by election deniers and has raised concerns about election integrity but stopped short of saying Trump won the 2020 election.
The two sides disagree on everything ranging from who owns the election equipment to the breakdown of responsibilities.
County Recorder Justin Heap said there was nothing nefarious about the removal, and his staff was taking back equipment his office had paid for, alongside empty, voided ballot envelopes. He said the scanner wasn’t in use during the election. He has accused the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors of manufacturing a scandal to hurt him in a legal battle he is waging against them.
Members of the board, meanwhile, say the scanner belonged to them and question Heap’s story. They say regardless of what was done with the scanner while it was gone, the fact that it left the premises meant it was compromised, and they spent $70,000 to replace it. The county attorney has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the incident and decide whether to bring criminal charges.
In Maricopa County, election responsibilities are divided between the recorder and the board of supervisors. The officials, almost all of whom are Republican, have been clashing about division of responsibilities for over a year. But the relationship has completely broken down recently, with each side accusing the other of lying, questioning each other’s ability to run a successful election and blaming each other for voter disenfranchisement.
President Trump has claimed without evidence that he won the 2020 election, instead of former President Joe Biden. Those claims rocked the entire country, but few places were stuck relitigating the votes longer than Arizona, a longtime GOP bastion that has become a political battleground in recent years. Trump insisted it was he, not Biden, who won the state. Biden did win Arizona by just over 10,000 votes, with Maricopa County being critical to his victory. The board of supervisors defended the accuracy of the election results, clashing frequently with Trump and his allies in the aftermath.
Heap came into office promising to address concerns about election fraud after the previous Republican recorder sided with the board in defending the way elections were run.
He said it was his mission to change the way the office operated to allay concerns of voters. He instituted several new policies, including an updated signature-verification process.
In an interview, Heap declined to say whether he believes President Trump’s false claims of election fraud. But he also doesn’t dispute them.
Thomas Galvin, a Republican supervisor, 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.”
“Can you imagine if one of us took the machine outside and brought it back and said, ‘Oh, no harm, no foul’? They would be the first people to be on the streets screaming with pitchforks,” Galvin said about Heap and his allies.
“To me, it looks to me like he’s flailing,” Heap said in response to Galvin, accusing him and his board colleagues of becoming “increasingly desperate to try to hold on to authority they don’t have. And they’re willing to say, I think, just about anything at this point if they think it will score political points.”
Heap has sued the board over responsibilities and technology systems that were given away from the recorder’s office in an agreement from Heap’s predecessor and the board just before Heap took office. Heap won a case in April, but an appeals court has paused the decision because the changes were too close to an election. Heap is now appealing the decision at the Arizona Supreme Court.
Helen Purcell, the former Republican recorder, got involved with the case when she submitted an amicus brief siding with the supervisors that argued changes in responsibility so close to an election violated the “Purcell principle.” That came from a Supreme Court ruling bearing her name that says changes shouldn’t be made close to an election because they could cause confusion and chaos.
“So much of dealing with elections is perception, and how this process is perceived is very important. The general public, they want to know that everything is running smoothly,” said Purcell, who served as recorder for almost three decades and said the drama was distressing for voter trust and her own party.
Trump and his allies have continued to raise concerns about election integrity ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, and senior administration officials are hunting for evidence to support Trump’s claim that he beat Biden.
Justice Department officials are now in possession of the digital files used during an audit ordered by the Republican legislature in Maricopa County from 2021. The audit, run by Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based company that had no federal accreditation to audit elections, ultimately reconfirmed Biden’s narrow win.
Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com
