{"id":392405,"date":"2025-11-20T14:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/392405\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T14:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:36:13","slug":"did-maricopa-county-recorder-reject-thousands-of-valid-ballots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/392405\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Maricopa County Recorder reject thousands of valid ballots?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because of new signature verification processes put in place by new Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap<\/a>, it\u2019s possible that thousands of legitimate ballots weren\u2019t counted in this month\u2019s all-mail, off-year election.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Heap met with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors as the five-member body officially canvassed and certified the Nov. 4 election. At that meeting, several supervisors questioned Heap about a concerning spike in the number of ballots rejected during the signature verification process.<\/p>\n

Nearly 6,000 ballots were not counted over signature issues, representing more than 0.8% of the roughly 700,000 ballots cast. That\u2019s more than double the rate of rejected ballots in last year\u2019s election. A similar signature rejection rate last year, when more than 2 million ballots were cast, would have resulted in roughly 16,000 ballots not being counted \u2014 a number high enough to have swung several close races.<\/p>\n

In raw numbers alone, the Recorder\u2019s Office \u2014 which is now run by Heap, a MAGA acolyte and election skeptic<\/a> who keeps bumbling into controversy<\/a> \u2014 rejected more than double the number of ballots this year than in the last off-year election in 2023. That year, only 1,425 ballots were rejected for having bad signatures, which represented about 0.3% of the total that were turned in.<\/p>\n

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At the canvas meeting on Wednesday, the jump in rejected ballots caught the eye of several supervisors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a significant increase in bad signatures,\u201d said board chairman Thomas Galvin, a Republican like Heap. \u201cLike more than double, percentage-wise.\u201d Supervisor Kate Brophy McGee, also a Republican, said she was \u201cvery concerned at the number of rejected ballots.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Recorder\u2019s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The 5,903 bad-signature ballots would not have swayed the only county-wide race had they been counted. Proposition 409<\/a> passed by a 19,000-vote margin. The rest of the ballot consisted of smaller local bond and budget override questions. The Board of Supervisors certified the election despite the high number of rejections.<\/p>\n

However, the spike raises concerning questions about Heap\u2019s practices, especially with a pivotal 2026 midterm election looming next year, when governor, attorney general and many other statewide races will be on the ballot. Those practices came under the microscope at Wednesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

Mail ballots aren\u2019t immediately counted the second they\u2019re turned in. One of many steps in the counting process requires Maricopa County officials and volunteers to verify the signatures on the ballot envelopes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This election, Heap introduced a new process that requires not one but two people \u2014 from different parties \u2014 to observe the verification of each signature. Due to this new practice, the personal identifying information belonging to each voter, such as their phone number and address, has been blocked out to make the process \u201cas secure as we possibly can,\u201d Heap told the board.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Signature rejection spike<\/p>\n

But that change may have led to more legitimate ballots being rejected. Verifiers rely on the previous signatures that the voter has on file to verify that signature. However, the signatures of many voters change over time. In previous years, signature verifiers could use other personally identifying information to verify a ballot. Heap\u2019s new process prevents that from happening, meaning more ballots are likely flagged for curing, which is when elections staff call a voter to verify their ballot.<\/p>\n

The director of mail-in-voting elections, Ray Valenzuela, told the board that 30,000 ballots had been flagged as questionable during the signature verification process this year. The Recorder\u2019s Office was able to get in contact with many of those voters through email, text or phone call. However, as Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego pointed out on social media, many voters caught up in signature verification miss the chance to ensure their ballot is counted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have voted in every election by mail since 2006,\u201d Gallego wrote. \u201cI had to call in and verify my signature. I was in DC. I am glad I caught the notification, but many people are too busy and avoid spam calls and texts.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the meeting, Heap claimed the \u201chigher rejection rate is based on the type of election.\u201d Because it was an all-mail election, in which voters who usually vote in person voted by mail, verifiers had fewer signatures to compare for some ballots. However, all-mail jurisdictional elections were held in both 2021 and 2023 in Maricopa County. Both of those years, the rate at which ballots weren\u2019t counted for bad signatures was 0.1% and 0.3%, respectively, according to ABC15 data analyst Garrett Archer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for the notion that perhaps Heap\u2019s new process caught fraudulent ballots that previously slipped through, his predecessor in the job \u2014 centrist Republican Stephen Richer \u2014 tossed water on that idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cLol at the idea of people going out of their way to steal a mail ballot packet, and forge a signature, to be able to cast one more vote in a \u2026 school bond election,\u201d Richer wrote on social media<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019d guess fewer than 5 of the 5,903 rejected were actually attempts at fraudulent voting.\u201d<\/p>\n

That means a lot of people whose votes should have been counted could have been disenfranchised. Though it probably didn\u2019t affect any races this year, next year\u2019s presents a whole \u2018nother ballgame. In 2022 \u2014 also a midterm year with Trump in office, with the governorship and other statewide seats up for grabs \u2014 1.5 million people voted in Maricopa County, more than double who turned up this year.<\/p>\n

Heap told the concerned board members \u2014 whom he has sued as part of an ongoing feud over election duties \u2014 that his office will continue making tweaks ahead of the 2026 primary election to ensure votes are counted, and quickly. But if the signature verification process remains gunked up, Maricopa County\u2019s elections could actually become the laughingstock Heap claimed they were when he was running for office last year.<\/p>\n

On X<\/a>, Galvin laid out the stakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt today\u2019s Canvas, I expressed my deep concern that too many valid ballots were rejected by Justin Heap\u2019s office because of the new signature verification policy,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAt this rate, 15,269 ballots would\u2019ve been rejected in \u201824 prez election. Only 7,220 were rejected in \u201824. Stay tuned.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Because of new signature verification processes put in place by new Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, it\u2019s possible…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":392406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,8988,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-392405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-election","12":"tag-phoenix","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115582532853554250","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}