Challenges to the 2026 Midterms in Arizona

Leading up to the 2026 midterm elections, President Donald Trump has been trying to settle old scores and to tip the scales in future races. These efforts have relied, at least in part, on claims about noncitizen voting and debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Across the country, election administration is being reshaped in ways that give election deniers more control over how elections are run. Officials aligned with Trump’s election agenda now have more power over voting rules, voter rolls, early voting, ballot handling, investigations, and certification. These officials are using their control over election offices and records to restrict voting, disrupt election administration, sow doubt about valid election results, and open the door even wider to federal intervention in state and local elections — at times in direct coordination with the Trump administration. 

This is happening acutely in a few key battleground states, including Arizona.

This is part of a series. Read more about our investigation in Georgia and North Carolina.  

What’s been happening

Across the state, people who amplified the president’s false claims about the 2020 election have been elected to offices that give them power over how elections are conducted. Many state election officials have ties to the election denial movement and could use their offices to sow chaos or mistrust about midterm election results. At least one official has already coordinated with the Trump administration on its effort to investigate the results of the 2020 election in the state. And all three of the Republican nominees for the top positions in Arizona — governor, secretary of state, and attorney general — are election deniers.

National leaders are eager to seize upon the power that election deniers have in the state.  Groups aligned with Trump’s agenda are pumping money into Arizona and the Trump administration itself is working with state and local officials.

The Trump administration is trying to intervene in the state’s elections

DOJ is rehashing baseless claims about the 2020 election

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) subpoenaed Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen for data and equipment related to the 2020 election review. The subpoena appears to be part of a broader effort to allege that the 2020 election was characterized by widespread fraud — a conspiracy theory that has been disproven time and time again. The data could also be manipulated to create a narrative that the county is unfit to manage elections, paving the way for Trump’s administration to intervene and take more control.

DOJ sent poll monitors to Arizona’s primary elections

The Department of Justice (DOJ) sent poll monitors to Arizona’s primary elections in July. It is possible that election monitors will be sent for the midterm election as well. While this is not unprecedented, the move could be part of a larger effort to raise doubt that elections are properly conducted. Voting activist groups have held election observer trainings to help ensure that the monitors are not intimidating voters.

DOJ has threatened the state over noncitizen voting

In July 2026, Arizona state election officials — as well as all other 50 states — received a letter from DOJ warning them that they could be prosecuted if any non-citizens voted in the November midterms. The midterm ballot will include a ballot referendum on a measure that would require all voters — including those voting by mail — to show valid government id when voting. Preventing noncitizens from voting — something that is very rare — has been a primary justification for this referendum.  

Election deniers and allies have key roles overseeing elections and are using their power to make it harder to vote

Justin Heap

Perhaps no local official better demonstrates how local officials are using their power to disrupt election administration — and coordinate with the Trump administration on this agenda — than Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap. 

Maricopa County is the most populous county in Arizona, containing Phoenix and more than half of the state’s population. As the biggest county in an important swing state, the county’s elections receive national attention and were central to election deniers’ conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.  

As the county recorder, Heap is in charge of early voting and voter registration. In Maricopa County, election administration responsibilities are shared between the county recorder and the county’s Board of Supervisors. Prior to Heap taking office, the balance of these responsibilities were redistributed. After an ugly, year-long legal battle in which Heap echoed Trump’s baseless critiques of elections in the county, Heap won his case and gained more authority over election administration issues such as voter registration, early voting, and election records’ chain of custody. 

Voting rights advocates warn that Heap will use this power to sow chaos and doubt into the county’s upcoming elections. Already, Heap has taken aggressive action based on largely inaccurate information. In May, he referred more than 200 people to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for potential prosecution. The individuals were registered to vote but had been flagged as noncitizens by a federal database. In actuality, just eight of these people had illegally voted.

Prior to the settlement that gave him more power over election administration, Heap sent a letter to the supervisors in May 2026 attacking their plan to establish drop boxes for depositing early voting ballots, even threatening that the Board and election workers could be held criminally liable if the boxes were approved. 

Heap was represented in the lawsuit by America First Legal Foundation (AFLF), a firm co-founded by White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller. This is unusual, because normally the county attorney would represent a county official. This arrangement indicates that Trump’s allies have a vested interest in Heap being in a position of authority.

Tom Crosby

Cochise County Board of Supervisors Vice President Terry Thomas (Tom) Crosby has used his role to push policies favored by election deniers and refused to certify the county’s 2022 election by the legal deadline. Crosby was indicted and faces two felony charges for this refusal. 

Crosby has continued to push conspiracy theories about voting machines and to advocate for ballot hand counts, a method that election experts warn is expensive and less accurate than voting machines. He also asked former Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to investigate voting machines in the county. These requests suggest that the county is laying the groundwork for claims of widespread fraud and issues in the upcoming midterm elections.

David Lara

Yuma County Recorder David Lara is an election denier with connections to the national movement, including organizations like True the Vote. In July 2020, Lara instructed a friend to monitor and document a polling station in the town of San Luis during its primary election. The resulting footage played a pivotal role in 2000 Mules, a widely debunked documentary about the 2020 election. 

Widespread election fraud and the 2020 election were a key part of Lara’s platform during his campaign in 2024. Earlier this year, Yuma County — with Lara’s support — voted to install cameras at ballot drop box sites, raising concerns about voters’ privacy and potential voter intimidation.

Records we obtained show that Lara has been in contact with the FBI about alleged election crimes in Yuma County. This raises further alarm bells about coordination between the Trump administration and local officials.

Mark Finchem

Mark Finchem is a member of the Arizona Senate who advocated overturning the results of the 2020 election and participated in the rally at the White House on January 6, 2021, that led to the attacks on the Capitol. Finchem is also the executive director of the Elections Fairness Institute, a nonprofit that promotes baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. According to the organization’s website, it has helped deploy ELLY, a controversial voter roll purge tool connected to John “Rick” Richards, a close ally of voting-restriction activist Cleta Mitchell with ties to election denial networks. 

Outside groups are scaling up election denial organizations in Arizona

Cleta Mitchell is a longtime proponent of voting restrictions who aided Trump in his attempts to remain in power in 2020. She leads the Election Integrity Network (EIN), a powerful voting restrictions advocacy group with chapters in at least 39 states. EIN pushes for local, state, and federal policy changes that would make it harder to vote. It also trains volunteers to monitor democratic elections and spread doubt about their results. 

Two groups — Strong Communities Foundation and Strong Communications Action — run EZAZ, the Arizona chapter of EIN. The FAIR Elections Fund, another group ran by Mitchell, gave $545,000 to the Strong Communities Foundation in the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year — the fund’s largest contribution to any state-based group and more than seven times as much as the group received the prior year. 

Merissa Caldwell leads both the Strong Communities Foundation and Strong Communities Action. She is married to Jeff Caldwell, Justin Heap’s former campaign manager and his current special projects director in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.

Why this matters

Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results failed because many people at the local, state, and federal level stood up to his pressure campaign. In Arizona, for example, Rusty Bowers, then the Arizona House speaker, resisted pressure from Trump and Rudy Giuliani to recall the state electors and hold a hearing to investigate fraud allegations. 

Now, however, many people with the authority to determine how elections are run or how results are finalized are people who ran for office claiming that the 2020 election was deeply flawed. If results in future races are contested or close, these same people could have the ability to introduce chaos, uncertainty, and conspiracy-fueled investigations into the process. 

The more the election results are called into question, the easier it is to push drastic, unprecedented intervention that could undermine democracy itself. And if the Trump administration can manufacture a crisis in one state, it makes it easier to create a national narrative and spread doubt and misinformation all across the country. 

Widespread distrust in the electoral system isn’t just an abstract issue. It often manifests as violent threats against election workers, everyday people who are public servants or have donated their time to help the democratic system. These threats or violence can disrupt their entire lives. 

What we’re doing about it

Uncovering Arizona officials’ ties to national election denier networks

In 2021, we launched an extensive investigation into the Arizona Senate’s partisan election review and unearthed records that showed the review was planned with an obvious intention of casting doubt on the results of the 2020 election. Our investigation also uncovered that Cleta Mitchell set up an escrow account and arranged for $1 million to be delivered to audit subcontractors. The Guardian traced these funds back to Trump’s Save America PAC. 

More recently, records we obtained suggested that Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap met with Arizona’s top federal prosecutor right before the DOJ told Maricopa County it would investigate, which raises questions about his coordination with federal officials.

Using public records requests and litigation to uncover more

We’ve filed dozens of public records requests to investigate what these individuals are doing behind the scenes and how national groups are getting involved in the state’s administration of elections. We’re also investigating proposed changes that would make it harder to vote in Arizona’s midterms.

Investigating what Trump’s allies and election deniers are doing behind the scenes

To investigate how Heap is discussing election administration with other county recorders, we requested nine Arizona counties’ email and text message communications with Heap’s office. To understand Justin Heap’s connections to election denier influencers and groups, we requested Heap’s communications to find potential coordination between Heap, his staff and these outside groups. We also requested personal financial disclosures on Heap. To learn more about America First Legal Foundation’s legal representation of Heap, we asked Maricopa County for records related to the legal firm, including engagement and retainer agreements, billing and payment records, and directives prepared by AFLF.

To learn more about Yuma County Recorder David Lara’s reported attempt to remove a ballot drop box at a public library, we asked for his office’s communications with key election denier entities as well as personal financial disclosures.

Investigating the federal government and outside groups’ involvement

To investigate DOJ’s demands for state voter rolls in Arizona, we sent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice for communications on state election matters as well as any relevant dissent memorandum. 

To better understand the Cochise County Board of Supervisors’s request for ODNI to investigate voting machines in the county, we asked for records from all Cochise County Board of Supervisors about the letters to DOJ and ODNI as well as any other correspondence with the agencies. We sent additional requests to Tom Crosby, given his previous attempts to subvert elections, to find out if he has been coordinating with any state legislators or outside groups.

To identify individuals and entities that were involved in drafting the voter id ballot referendum, we sent requests to lawmakers for sponsors’ communications with elections denial groups, as well as requests for another specific legislator’s communications on related matters. 

To investigate a group of Arizona senators’ July 2026 trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with national groups working to undermine our elections, we requested all records from these senators about their trip. 

Investigating political motivations behind election administration measures

To learn more about Republican attorneys general’s support for Arizona’s proof of citizenship voting law, we asked for the communications of state attorney general offices in select states with election denial groups regarding the law.

To understand why Pinal County is still using a precinct-based voting model — something the Arizona secretary of state says is due to “some weird political motivations — we requested communications among county officials and the secretary of state as well as outside legal organizations regarding the issue. To learn more about Apache County’s decision to remove the Spanish language translation from printed ballots, we requested records related to this decision, including any guidance, talking points, and justifications for this decision.

And to understand how county recorders are using their roles to change election administration policies, we sent requests to five county recorders’ offices for records reflecting changes in policies regarding access to voter registration forms and vote-by-mail procedures.