Maricopa County officials spar over election security

It appears that the gloves have officially come off, again, for two of the highest-ranking elected officials in Arizona’s most populous county.

That’s because a pair of first-term Republicans, in Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee and the County Recorder Justin Heap, are still at loggerheads about election security.

The latest flareup between the two came up because of a viral video from Oct. 7, which The Center Square reported about on Wednesday.

The video, which shows two employees at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center just south of downtown Phoenix working on a computer at around 10:40 p.m., was captured on a livestream camera that an organization called “We The People” set up inside the facility.

During an interview with The Center Square on Thursday, Brophy McGee expressed her displeasure with Heap and his team for their decision to report the incident to the FBI and U.S. Attorney General’s Office instead of to her and the board.

She also had strong words for Heap. She said the recorder's rhetoric online fanned the flames, ]leading to both employees' names being made public online, a practice known as "doxxing."

"I think the way I could best describe it is this is the most egregious case of confirmation bias I have seen yet," Brophy McGee told The Center Square. "It's just they see something, they know something's going on, they’ve got it, and that's what it felt like to me. And it's like, ‘Excuse me, here were two elections employees doing their job.' "

Brophy McGee said the two employees in question were conducting high-priority elections work, updating a system related to ballots that needed to be duplicated because of accidental damage, such as being stained or torn slightly.

She added that there were multiple employees inside the facility because of the county’s requirement that nobody enters by themselves.

Brophy McGee, a former state legislator out of Sunnyslope, confirmed that none of the machines in question were connected to the internet and that employees in question worked in ballot tabulation and Information technology for the county.

All the information on the computer in question is used to print duplicate ballots as requested by the county’s duplication team, she said. From there, that computer has nothing with ballot tabulation or the tabulation system, being used instead to store the various ballot styles from cities and municipalities in the region, Brophy McGee said.

“They had an assignment from our elections director, saying you need to go in and upload the data so that when we start duplicating ballots that are too messed up to go through the tabulator,” Brophy McGee told The Center Square. “We can pull off a duplicate ballot and then with an election team that is comprised of Republicans and Democrats jointly agreeing to what is on the ballot, all that chain of custody related to the original ballot, the duplicate ballot, that's all put together.”

The Center Square reached out to Heap and his office for a response to Brophy McGee's comments but did not get a reply in time for publication.

How Maricopa County got here

McGee’s Phoenix-based board, which governs Maricopa County, and Heap’s Recorder’s Office reached a deal to settle their running litigation over the summer, deciding who would oversee separate components of the primary and general elections.

As part of that deal, the board paid for 12 positions in Heap’s office, covering early voting, while maintaining its role in operating and supervising ballot tabulations, as state law requires.

The board will also fund 24 new information technology positions to work in Heap’s office, while spending another $15 million on a new information technology system for Heap’s office that operates outside of the current system.

Further, the two camps agreed to collaboratively oversee the current county information technology system until a new one is built, ending the sparring between the two sides just before Arizona’s primary elections on July 21.

On Thursday, when asked how she’d describe that relationship, Brophy McGee compared it to dealing with a difficult family member. She cited harassment that her election employees, including the two who were seen on the now-viral late-night livestream, have experienced.

“You can’t pick them [elected officials such as the recorder]. It’s who the voters send, and it is your obligation to work with them, and that’s my obligation,” she said. “But when our employees get targeted, I lose my temper, and that’s where I am.”

McGee: Voters, don't worry

When asked how much concern voters should have about what happened on Oct. 7th, Brophy McGee said she would caution residents to avoid jamming the panic button.

“It’s not even to the level of an incident,” Brophy McGee said. “It is a work occurrence that is taking place during the height of an election, where deadlines have to be met. I don’t believe it rises to the level of an ‘incident.’ What is being said out on the internet — which is wrong — can be very misleading and very alarming and very concerning. None of it is true.”

With just over two weeks to go until Election Day, Brophy McGee said the news out of Maricopa County isn’t all doom and gloom.

That’s because early voting levels have exceeded where they were at this point in the 2022 midterm cycle, the lifelong Republican said, which she attributed to her team’s hard work, day and night.

“it's up to the voters,” Brophy McGee said. “My job is to ensure that those ballots are counted, and I am so dead certain on that. I know they will be. I know they are. But we don't determine outcomes. We determine the ballots and counting them.”