Editor’s note: This story has been updated with statements from Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and Kate Brophy McGee, the chair of the county board of supervisors.
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Newly released video shows Maricopa County Recorder employees entering the county elections department and absconding with a pre-tabulation ballot scanner and provisional ballot envelopes during Tempe’s jurisdictional elections earlier this year.
A special prosecutor is currently investigating whether Bryan Colby, the chief information officer for Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, and another unidentified Recorder’s office worker broke the law by removing the items from the county’s vote tabulation center. Due to chain-of-custody issues, the board replaced the scanner at a cost of $70,000.
The incident is the most recent episode in a long-running feud between Heap and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors over who runs what for elections in the county. Heap, an election-skeptic Republican, has claimed in court that the scanner belongs to his office, which handles voter registration and mail ballots. That’s been disputed by the board, which is controlled by more centrist Republicans, and the elections department, which tabulates votes and handles Election Day voting.
In a statement provided to Phoenix New Times, board of supervisors chairperson Kate Brophy McGee called the episode “baffling” and “outrageous,” adding that “Maricopa County officials and voters deserve answers from Recorder Heap, and I look forward to the special prosecutor’s findings.” In his own statement posted online, Heap insisted his employees did nothing wrong and took aim at the board of supervisors.
“I have lost confidence in the Board’s Integrity, its willingness to follow the law, and its ability to engage in good-faith cooperation,” Heap said in the statement. “But even after everything that has occurred, I remain stunned by a Board willing to threaten, slander, and publicly attack county employees who have no meaningful ability to defend themselves.”
The ballot scanner incident occurred as votes were being tallied in the March 10 election for three seats on the Tempe City Council. According to emails Phoenix New Times received in response to a public records request, the scanner was used during that election. A purchase order shows that the Elections Department bought the scanner from Runbeck Election Services in January 2023 for $105,600.
According to silent security camera footage from inside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, Colby and a second recorder’s office employee — whose face has been blurred in the video released to news outlets — walked into the facility’s pre-tabulation cubicle area around 1:36 p.m. on March 12. The two men had entered the facility just two minutes prior, according to the county’s Human Resources Administrative Investigation Overview, for which the recorder’s office declined to participate.
Colby can be seen pushing a two-tiered gray cart through a cubicle area. He and the other recorder employee gave a brief wave to the election employees in that area. Colby then left the frame for a few seconds, leaving the cart behind him.
Two election employees can be seen standing in their cubicles, looking over at the duo. One then walked over and appeared to try to talk to them. According to the HR investigation, that employee — who is also unnamed and whose face is also blurred — asked Colby and his companion what they were doing. In response, Colby told her that Recorder’s Office election director “Rey (Valenzuela) knows about it.” The election employee said she wasn’t informed that the scanner would be removed, at which point Colby repeated his statement.
In the HR investigation, election employees describe the interaction as “unexpected and abrupt” and “characterized their demeanor as visibly angry.” Later, an election employee emailed upper management about Colby’s taking of the scanner.
The two Recorder’s Office employees can then be seen hoisting the ballot scanner onto the cart Colby had brought into the room, then wheeling it out of the cubicle area.
A minute later, a different camera captured Colby, without the scanner, walking toward the early voting processing cage in the facility. An unidentified election employee opened the cage for him, and the two men walked over to a shelf with blue boxes. Colby grabbed “what appears to be provisional ballot affidavit envelopes” before the door to the cage even closed, according to the HR investigation. He showed the employee the documents and looked at them closely outside the cage for a few seconds before leaving the room.
The investigation couldn’t locate video evidence of Colby returning the envelopes to the cage, but it did confirm with the elections department that they were ultimately accounted for. The investigation alleged that those envelopes “may have been photocopied,” which “raises questions and risks for the County regarding election processes.”
Minutes after Colby left the cage, an outside camera recorded him and the other recorder’s office employee leaving the building via a ramp on the northeast side of the building on Third Avenue. The two men pushed the cart from behind, with the scanner still on top. A different camera captured them pushing the scanner and cart toward a gray pick-up truck with a black cover. According to the HR investigation, the truck had “no County insignia” and was “presumably a personal vehicle.”
Colby opened the truck bed and then appeared to place the ballot envelopes on the front seat of the vehicle. The two men then slid the scanner into the truck bed and closed the tailgate. A minute later, after the second employee returned the cart to MCTEC, the pair drove away.
That’s where the security footage ends. However, according to the HR investigation, 10 minutes after leaving MCTEC, the two employees arrived on the second floor of the Jefferson Garage, which is attached to the recorder’s office. They then pushed the pre-tabulation scanner into the county administrative building.
As recorder employees entered the building, Maricopa County Election Director Scott Jarrett emailed Recorder’s Office Chief of Staff Sam Stone to notify him that equipment belonging to Jarrett’s department had been removed by the recorder’s staff.
“Can you please direct Bryan Colby to return the Elections Department scanner immediately,” Jarrett wrote. “Also, Bryan Colby needs to be directed not to access or remove Elections Department equipment in the future.”
Seven minutes after taking the scanner into the recorder’s office, Colby’s companion brought it back out to the garage. Two minutes later, Stone responded to Jarrett’s email. “Apologies,” he wrote, “my understanding is the machine was marked for EV (Early Voting).” Thirteen minutes after that, the employee pushed a cart with the scanner from the vehicle toward MCTEC’s entrance.
The entire incident, from Colby’s entrance into the MCTEC cubicle area to the return of the scanner, lasted less than an hour.
The HR investigation recommended that the recorder’s office investigate Colby’s conduct and “take any appropriate action to address concerns, including a potential referral to law enforcement.” This recommendation stems in part from the fact that Colby was informed by Elections IT staffer Brian Stormer via a Teams message, a little more than a week before he went into MCTEC, that the scanners had been purchased by the elections department.
However, after the recorder’s office was sent the HR investigation, Stone claimed in an email exchange on March 30 that the recorder “did purchase two of these scanners” and that “Colby “believes, based on the paperwork attached, that the scanner in question” was “one of the two” belonging to the recorder. That turned out to be incorrect.
“This entire incident could and should have been handled with a phone call,” Stone added. “And we do not believe any continued investigation is appropriate.”
Morgan Fischer
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