PHOENIX - Can the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and Recorder Justin Heap move past their public feud and cooperate on election planning with early voting for the 2026 midterm primaries less than four months away?
Vice Chair Debbie Lesko said Thursday she hopes so despite a "frustrating" relationship between the Republican-controlled board and the first-term Republican recorder.
"We need to work together to run smooth elections, and what has transpired is frustrating, but we're working it out between the Recorder's Office and the Board of Supervisors," Lesko told KTAR News 92.3 FM's The Mike Broomhead Show.
Arizona law dictates a split in election duties between the county boards and recorders.
"The Elections Department runs day-of-election voting and tabulation, and the Recorder's Office in state law runs voter registration, sending out the early ballots and verifying the signatures of the early ballots," said Lesko, who represents the West Valley's District 4 on the five-member board.
However, Heap and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors have a long-running dispute over certain aspects of their arrangement and have failed to come to terms on a Shared Services Agreement (SSA). The issue is still in court after Heap filed a lawsuit and the board countersued.
Lesko said the board has basically agreed to give Heap "everything he wanted."
"The lawyers were talking to each other and doing offers back and forth. I saw the email threads. But for whatever reason, Justin Heap didn't respond to the counteroffer," the former congresswoman said.
In absence of a formal SSA, the supervisors agreed to give the recorder jurisdiction over early in-person voting and split the IT system between Heap's office and the Elections Department, which is under the board.
"So we're working together right now. ... Actually, the staffs are having meetings. It's unfortunate that there's this battle on social media. It's been frustrating, but we're really concentrating because we have to work together for the 2026 election," Lesko said.
Time is of the essence with early voting starting June 24, less than four months from now, for Arizona's July 21 primaries. It will be the first statewide election since Heap took office in January 2024.
"We have to, in very short order, sign contracts for all the Election Day voting centers, which are about 260," Lesko said. "And so, our Elections Department asked all of those centers, 'Do you want to also be an early in-person voting site?'"
Lesko and Supervisor Thomas Galvin suggested on X that Heap failed to open all the tabs in the spreadsheet the board sent him before he made his complaint.
Lesko said Thursday the board is just trying to coordinate on the vote center selection and that the early voting plan details are up to Heap.
"We've offered a list of all of these sites that we contacted to the recorder to help him and we said, 'Hey, if you don't want these sites, you can change them, you can modify them. We just need to know because we need to sign the contracts like soon,'" Lesko said.
The board also offered to help out with poll worker training and recruitment for early voting, Lesko added.
"We're really trying to work with him because we realized he's never done this before and we want it to be run smoothly," she said.