Overview
- The Superior Court found the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors acted unlawfully by seizing the recorder’s personnel, systems and equipment, and ordered the staff returned or equivalent funding provided.
- The decision assigns oversight of in-person early voting to the Recorder’s Office, while the board keeps duties such as picking Election Day sites, supplying polling places and hiring poll workers.
- The judge said IT staff and direct system access are necessary expenses the board must fund, citing testimony that more than half of the recorder’s IT requests went unresolved and that outages followed the transfer.
- The ruling upholds the board’s broad budget control, allowing it to deny a new Agilis ballot-sorting machine and to block the recorder’s use of $4 million in temporary legislative funding.
- Board Chair Kate Brophy McGee said supervisors may appeal, and the case—sparked after Recorder Justin Heap ended a prior sharing deal—now shapes how Maricopa County prepares its election systems and staffing for 2026.