Three days after Election Day, Maricopa County discovered two boxes of lost, uncounted ballots.
These two boxes contained nearly 2,300 ballots. With just mere hours before the curing deadline, the recorder’s office scrambled to make sure the “lost” status of these votes didn’t become a permanent one.
The Maricopa County Elections Department (MCED) issued a statement notifying the public of the lost ballots on Friday morning.
According to MCED, election workers failed to return the two boxes because they placed them, mistakenly, into a blue drop box. MCED assured the public that both boxes had no signs of tampering (the tamper-proof seals weren’t cut) and that the serial numbers on the boxes match up to Election Night serial numbers.
County Recorder Justin Heap said the county supervisors “dropped the problem” on him to fix. Heap claimed, also, that the board shared a disparate set of facts to him than the narrative they submitted to the public.
“The Maricopa Board of Supervisors made yet another election mistake, which has further damaged public trust in our elections,” said Heap.
It’s been a very busy day for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
Today, the Board discovered they had lost thousands of ballots, then dropped the problem on the Recorder to fix.
They presented one set of facts to the Recorder and the Media in the morning, then did a… pic.twitter.com/W9GOQnNCU9
— Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap (@azjustinheap) November 8, 2025
One of those alleged disparate facts had to do with the location of the missing ballots.
Heap reported Friday afternoon that the ballots were left behind at a ballot replacement site in Fountain Hills. MCED disputed this claim and said the ballots were not left behind at Fountain Hills but instead delivered to Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) on Election Night, and not from Fountain Hills but from another location in the West Valley.
Supervisor Mark Stewart (District 1) said the drop box containing the two ballot boxes weren’t properly checked in, and that the surveillance footage clears workers of fraud or interference. It seems Stewart also got the faulty memo of the ballot boxes’ location, initially reporting them as having come from Fountain Hills before issuing a correction on X.
The public deserves complete confidence in the integrity of our elections, and I will do everything I can to make sure our systems reflect that trust.
I just got off a Teams call to get a full breakdown of what happened.
Here’s what we know. Two poll workers placed two sealed… pic.twitter.com/sdU73AGok0
— Mark Stewart Maricopa County Supervisor District 1 (@MarkStewart_AZ) November 8, 2025
Several contests in the West Valley — from where the lost ballots came — were decided by less than 2,300 votes.
Consistent with typical off-year election voter turnout, this year’s turnout averaged 27 percent (around 704,000 ballots cast overall out of over 2.6 million registered voters). That means that a couple thousand votes are more than enough to decide a contest, especially in local questions. In some cases, around a dozen votes made all the difference.
The Buckeye Union High School District bond approval failed by just under 1,500 votes. Buckeye Elementary School District’s budget increase failed by less than 200 votes.
Similarly, Tolleson Union High School District’s bond approval and budget override failed by just under 2,000 votes and 1,600 votes, respectively.
Peoria Unified School District’s budget increase failed by about 1,200 votes.
Nadaburg Unified School District’s bond approval failed by less than 500 votes.
Dysart Unified School District’s budget override succeeded by about 1,700 votes, but its bond approval failed by less than 600 votes.
Saddle Mountain Unified School District’s bond approval and budget increase failed by less than 300 votes and just over 200 votes, respectively.
Pendergast Elementary School District’s bond approval failed by less than 300 votes.
Deer Valley Unified School District’s budget increase succeeded by just over 1,500 votes.
The city of Avondale’s Proposition 404 bond approval succeeded by less than 300 votes, and its Proposition 405 bond approval failed by 13 votes.
The city of Glendale’s first bond approval (Question 1) succeeded by just over 1,700 votes, and its second bond approval (Question 2) failed by just 12 votes.
Friday evening, just hours after the county discovered the boxes, Heap advised that his office completed signature verification on all of the missing ballots. However, he made a public appeal for more voters to respond to their ballot curing efforts in fading few hours before the deadline passed.
RECORDER'S ELECTION UPDATE:
My office has completed signature verification on all 2288 of the missing ballot packets we received from the Board this morning.In the last hours we have contacted all remaining voters with signatures requiring additional verification to inform…
— Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap (@azjustinheap) November 7, 2025
Some voters expressed concerns that voters wouldn’t be given enough time to cure their ballots ahead of the Friday deadline. This deadline remained fixed per state law, even given the extenuating circumstance caused by the county’s mistake.
Heap accused the county of exercising unlawful control over ballot replacement sites, authority which he said the recorder’s office holds per the law.
“This latest error undermines voter confidence and highlights the ongoing problems caused by the Board’s continued seizure of functions that statutorily belong to the Recorder,” said Heap.
As of Friday, the county had an estimated 8,400 uncounted ballots. 89 percent of the uncounted ballots were awaiting signature curing: about 7,500 ballots.
The other uncounted ballots were provisional (90), awaiting pre-tabulation processing (500), and awaiting tabulation (300).