PHOENIX — In a feud over early voting in Maricopa County, Recorder Justin Heap accused the Board of Supervisors of lying about early-voting locations, but documents obtained by ABC15 tell a different story.
Heap and the board agreed last month that the Recorder’s Office would handle early voting. He slammed the board over a list of potential voting locations, saying a spreadsheet provided by county elections officials didn’t include enough early-voting locations.
On Saturday, Heap tweeted screenshots of a spreadsheet he described as “a recycled master list” of the 2024 voting locations. The list, he said, did not include “160+ alternate early voting sites” he could choose from.
“I’m going to do what the Board did not, and post the spreadsheet here so the public can see through the Board’s lie,” he wrote.
ABC15 obtained the email that the county’s election director sent to the Recorder’s Office and a redacted copy of the attached spreadsheet. The screenshots in Heap's tweet crop out fields showing more than 100 sites had not yet confirmed their availability for early voting.
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In the email, Elections Director Scott Jarrett said all of the locations listed in the second tab of the spreadsheet have been asked if they would be willing to be an early-voting location. Jarrett said his office needed feedback on the early-voting locations, saying the Recorder’s Office could add or remove from the list.
The county also provided ABC15 with a document saying it was waiting on confirmation from 135 sites and had confirmed 25 early-voting locations.
“When the Board claimed that the second tab contained 160+ alternate early voting locations, they were lying,” Heap wrote in his tweet on Saturday.
The spreadsheet, which redacts the facility names and street addresses, shows several fields cropped out of the screenshots Heap tweeted. The document lists which locations the county is waiting to confirm and which locations are new for 2026.
See those documents below:
When asked why his description of the spreadsheet doesn't describe the document ABC15 obtained in the records request, Heap said: “Well, then you must have a document that's different than the one that I'm looking at, all that we’ve received from the board.”
He said he cropped out the other fields, including one titled “primary move – waiting on confirmation,” to protect the facilities, saying he only included their names.
“We want to make sure that they're protected from being pulled into any fight between elected officials or any controversy,” Heap told ABC15.
The spreadsheet provided to ABC15 redacts the facility names and street addresses but displays the cities and zip codes, as well as the other fields.
“In actuality, he misread the spreadsheets, so I think he viewed what was sent to him – as a courtesy – as our plan,” Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee told ABC15. “It is no such thing. It is the start of a plan.”
She said the county elections department had been lining up sites for Election Day voting.
“And so we offered, as we have done in the past, to share with him and ask that additional follow-up question: ‘Would you be willing to serve as an early in-person site?’” Brophy McGee said.
Heap declined to comment on his accusation that the supervisors had lied.
“Well, look, I'm not going to get into the back and forth that's gone onto Twitter. I think the voters can read the tweets themselves,” he said, adding that he’s focused on delivering elections that are more effective than previous ones.
“Our goal is to make sure my staff is working to not just go through the list of previous possible sites, but identify new sites so that we can expand the number of early-voting locations to make sure ... we have a plan that's calculated to provide equal access to all voters across the county,” he said.
Brophy McGee said she is eager to move on from the controversy and stay clear of “social media back and forth.”
“My focus is reassuring voters they can vote, their vote will be counted, the elections will be fair, and there will be integrity,” she said.
She told ABC15 the staff in both the Elections Department and Recorder’s Office are working together to finalize an election plan.
“What I'm looking at is what's actually happening on the ground, because that's what matters to voters,” she said.
