Justin Heap, an Arizona lawmaker who has pushed for severe voting restrictions and whose campaign was led by an indicted 2020 “fake elector” for Donald Trump, has won control of one of the country’s most important local elections offices.
Voters in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and most of Arizona’s population, elected Heap last week to be their next county recorder. He defeated Democrat Tim Stringham by about four percentage points—a relative blowout for the nation’s most populous swing county, where the last two recorder elections were decided by 0.3 points and 1.1 points, respectively.
Maricopa County has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories about voter fraud since the 2020 election, and the outgoing recorder, Republican Stephen Richer, suffered death threats for rebuffing these unfounded allegations. Heap, who defeated Richer in the GOP primary in July, has fanned those conspiracy theories and refused to recognize as legitimate the results of the 2020 and 2022 elections.
As a state representative, Heap backed legislation to ban most early-voting options in the state and to encourage hand-counting of ballots. He ran this year with the backing of a corps of prominent far-right politicians like Kari Lake, who have spent recent years sowing distrust in the state’s election results. Echoing their lie that election administration in Arizona is conducive to fraud, he vowed to pursue major changes from the recorder’s office.
“The voters are sick of our elections making us a national laughingstock,” he told the crowd at an Arizona rally for Trump in September. “The voters are sick of being mocked and condescended to when they ask sincere questions about our election system. And, most of all, voters are sick of hearing from their neighbors, ‘Why should I even vote if I can’t trust the system?’”
Heap now assumes office at the same time Trump retakes the White House, having signaled his intent to use federal law to restrict voter registration and ballot access. Heap’s promises to “clean the voter rolls” or to have all votes be counted by Election Day could test how far Trump allies can stretch this playbook in local election offices.
But Heap will face many constraints in implementing his agenda. The recorder’s office can’t just wipe people off of voter rolls, as state law explicitly forbids that. It can’t ensure election results are known by the end of Election Day, mainly because the office doesn’t even control ballot tabulation in the county. And if Heap doubts the results of any future election, he cannot thwart certification because that, too, is outside of his office’s purview. The secretary of state’s office, in Democratic hands until at least 2026, looms as another check since it issues regulations guiding how elections must be run.
Plus, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which oversees many election administration duties, moved just last month to take away some more power from the office Heap will inherit….