(The Center Square) – Maricopa County Supervisor Mark Stewart is hoping a court-ordered mediator can settle the dispute between the Board of Supervisors and Recorder Justin Heap about who controls the county’s elections.
This week, Stewart filed a legal request seeking a court-ordered mediation between the board and Heap. The legal action is separate from the board’s decision this week to file a motion for a stay in the ongoing court case in Arizona’s most populous county, which is home to Phoenix.
In April, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled that the board members needed to relinquish control of specific election functions. Blaney also said the board needed to return Heap’s information technology staff, servers, databases, software and websites or fund their replacement.
Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee said the judge’s ruling “creates confusion about key aspects of election administration including chain of custody, on-site tabulation, and the handling of mail-in ballots on Election Day.”
“Making major changes in the middle of the election cycle is not just a terrible idea for voters, it’s going to be almost impossible to implement responsibly,” she added.
The Center Square reached out to the board and Heap’s office, but they did not respond before press time.
Stewart said he pursued his own legal action because his position differed from that of the other board members regarding how to react to the judge’s ruling.
He told The Center Square that with the court motion, he hopes to have a court-appointed mediator determine which election-related responsibilities belong to the board and the recorder.
The court-appointed mediator “creates solutions, and that’s what the voters expect,” he said.
“We have to get the politics out of this, and we have to get thinking about this like a business,” Stewart said. “How do we get this fixed, and how do we move forward on behalf of our customers?”
Stewart said the board and recorder should “revert back to the 2023 Shared Service Agreement.”
The SSA is a “mutual understanding between the board and recorder about the management of election-related activities,” according to the county’s website.
The 2023 SSA allowed the recorder to be responsible for voter registration, rolls and databases; early ballot processing; signature verification and election IT systems.
The board had control over election-day operations, polling locations, early voting sites, poll workers and temporary staffing, hand-count audits and tabulation equipment.
However, in the 2024 SSA, more power was given to the board regarding early ballot processing, IT systems, election infrastructure and centralized administration.
The 2024 SSA also made the county’s director of elections responsible for the elections department, rather than the recorder. This means the 2024 SSA reduced the recorder’s operational control of elections in Maricopa County.
Stewart told The Center Square the judge’s ruling on who controls election duties in the county is similar to the 2023 SSA.
Historically, the recorder has run all the county’s elections, he said, noting that it wasn’t until 2024 that the board took away election responsibilities from the recorder.
When Heap came to office in 2025, he and the board were close to agreeing on an SSA, but were unable to finalize one. This led to Heap filing a lawsuit seeking to regain control of certain election functions in Maricopa County.
According to Stewart, the dispute over who controlled which election functions in the county should have been resolved last year.
Stewart said the board and recorder are both focused on having “good, effective, transparent and well-done elections.”
“Everybody’s pushing towards the same goal. They just have different ideas of the pathway to get there,” Stewart noted.
“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “We should be able to get along and should be able to solve these problems without bringing the courts in.”
Despite the board and recorder disputing who controls election duties in the county, Stewart said he is not concerned about how upcoming elections will operate because the staff who runs elections in Maricopa County are “remarkable.”
“I don’t think there will be any issues with the election,” he said. “I’m pretty confident in our staff.”
