Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, an election integrity champion, has been unsuccessfully trying to regain control of his duties over early and mail-in voting, which the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) reduced before he assumed office this year.
Heap attempted to renegotiate the Shared Services Agreement (SSA) with the MCBOS without success this year, and finally submitted a final draft of the SSA to the MCBOS last week, hinting at legal action. He requested a response by Friday.
However, Grassroots activist Merissa Hamilton of EZAZ observed on X on Wednesday that the MCBOS, led by chair Thomas Galvin, a holdover from the last board, hasn’t scheduled any public review of Heap’s SSA yet.
The Maricopa County Republican Committee demanded that Galvin step down as chair in March due to his actions resulting in Republicans being unable to speak to the MCBOS about their election integrity concerns.
Galvin said after becoming supervisor in December 2021 that the 2020 election was conducted fairly. He called former Attorney General Mark Brnovich “rogue” for releasing an interim report that raised concerns about 2020 election procedures, and rejected Brnovich’s report.
“If you’re going to open up a criminal investigation, you don’t do things like issue a quote-unquote interim report,” Galvin told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Gaydos and Chad Show during an interview in 2022. “You don’t go on Twitter and make these cheeky videos. You don’t go on a crazy podcast with conspiracy theorists. This is a serious job as attorney general of the state of Arizona, you’re the top law enforcement official of the state. So act like it. … We should be holding up the county as an exemplar of good ways to run elections to the rest of the country.”
Galvin replaced former supervisor Steve Chucri, who resigned after statements he’d made about the election being insecure went public. He said his colleagues were trying to conceal the real results of the election. “And it’s not just Arizona, it’s Georgia, it was Michigan, it was all these other states, so it’s not just like it was an isolated incident with no proof,” Chucri said during a secretly recorded phone call published by The Gateway Pundit. “This is going to be a joint effort and I’m embarrassed to say that my colleagues were challenging the legislature on the subpoenas.”
In a news release partially titled “Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap Rejects Thomas Galvin’s Attempts to Undermine Election Integrity,” Heap explained how the power grab went down initially. “This dispute originated when, after losing re-election in a landslide during the 2024 primary election, outgoing Recorder Stephen Richer and the current Chairman of the Board, along with a lame-duck Board majority, quickly and secretly executed a new SSA that took effect on December 10, 2024, stripping the incoming Recorder of significant election responsibilities and drastically shrinking his budget and staff.”
Heap said he made every attempt to renegotiate a new SSA with the new MCBOS, but “[d]espite these good faith efforts, the Board of Supervisors, led by Thomas Galvin, has made no meaningful attempts to address these critical issues in any of their SSA drafts, instead choosing to gaslight the public with a propaganda campaign of mis- and disinformation about the ongoing negotiations, while limiting Recorder Heap’s ability to participate in their public proceedings and outright banning participation by members of the public.”
The last draft the MCBOS provided to Heap failed to return his statutory details. Hamilton posted on X about their version, “I reviewed the SSA @ThomasGalvin published for the Special Meeting Agenda today, and it doubles down on every aspect of major maladministration that’s plagued Maricopa County over the last decade.”
He warned, “Make no mistake, due to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors’ chaotic and reckless actions, Arizona’s most populous county currently has no SSA in place — jeopardizing election readiness and security, and positioning the 2025 special elections and 2026 election for failure and a repeat of the chaos that has seemingly become the norm for Maricopa County in recent elections.” Maricopa County makes up approximately 60 percent of the state, usually determining election outcomes.
Due to the MCBOS’s “failure to negotiate and act in good faith,” Heap hinted he might pursue litigation if his “final SSA proposal” isn’t “returned and that all necessary budget for the performance of those duties be provided immediately.” In February, Heap threatened to sue the MCBOS if they did not execute a new agreement and return his powers.
He noted that the final draft was composed in part by Andrew Gould, a former Arizona Supreme Court Justice.
Gould, who also ran as a conservative candidate for attorney general in 2022, said in his letter to the MCBOS regarding the final draft, “The primary focus of the changes is to return the parties to their statutorily imposed duties.”
The MCBOS had taken away Heap’s entire IT department, making him the only county official without his own IT department. Gould said in his letter,
I am not sure what led the Board to removing the Recorder’s entire IT department. If it was under the auspices of efficiency, please advise if the IT departments of any other constitutional, elected officials were also recently transferred to the Board. Candidly, I think that the Board acted in excess of its authority in making this transfer, and it is no substitute to provide the Recorder ‘access’ to these services that are now under the daily control of the Board. Such actions have been taken before by County Boards, and have always been struck down as ultra vires.
Heap expressed his skepticism that the MCBOS will cooperate.
“It is likely, based on their behavior since the start of this process, that the Board and their left-wing media allies will again attempt to gaslight the public and wage a propaganda campaign against the Recorder’s Office…” he said in his press release.
Heap said, “[The voters are] tired of our elections being the laughingstock of the nation, and they want them fixed immediately. … Fortunately for the voters, no matter how many lies the Board may choose to spread about me and my office, I will stay focused on delivering more secure, more honest, and more transparent elections.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to .
Photo “Justin Heap” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “Maricopa County Board of Supervisors” by Maricopa County.
The post Recorder Justin Heap Is Trying to Regain His Office from the Maricopa County Supervisors’ ‘Attempt to Undermine Election Integrity’ first appeared on The Arizona Sun Times.