The MAGA movement’s efforts to shape the midterm elections are running into roadblocks in Arizona.

Arguably nowhere in the country has there been a more brazen attempt by Donald Trump and his allies to wield control over the election system, all while they have promoted demonstrable lies about rampant election fraud in the state.

Amid the president’s illiberal push to have the GOP “take over” voting processes ahead of the midterms — elections Trump has said shouldn’t even be held — a Phoenix-area official has played a key role in fueling the Trump regime’s dictatorial dreams.

Machinations by Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and his office on this front — allegedly including the unauthorized seizure of a ballot scanning machine — have drawn rebukes from Maricopa’s Republican county attorney as well as the county’s GOP-controlled Board of Supervisors.

And last week, Arizona’s Court of Appeals blocked a lower court’s order that gave Heap broad authority over Maricopa County elections. As Democracy Docket reported:

Arizona judges blocked a lower court order that took election duties away from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and assigned them to county Recorder Justin Heap, an election denier who has pushed conspiracy theories about voting in the state.

The emergency stay issued Thursday should pause a long-simmering legal feud between board officials and Heap that ignited uncertainty about how the upcoming primaries and November midterm elections would go forward in the county.

In particular, the dispute threatened early voting drop box locations across the county, with Heap objecting to the board’s approval of sites last month. Now, voters can expect the drop boxes to be available and for the election to be administered more predictably.

As Democracy Docket noted, the appellate judges stayed the order under the so-called Purcell principle, a legal doctrine with roots in Arizona that was designed to prevent election changes from being imposed too close to Election Day. Early voting for Arizona’s July 21 primary elections has already begun.

The Purcell principle has been used by conservative judges to uphold discriminatory voting policies, but this appears to be an occasion on which it was deployed in service of its rightful purpose.

In light of the appeals court’s stay, Arizona’s Supreme Court issued an order on Tuesday that basically requires Heap and the Board of Supervisors to make a “good faith” attempt to reach an agreement through an independent mediator.

This news had me thinking of a segment that aired on Wednesday’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” in which activist Ian Bassin argued that, in his second term, Trump has been in a race to “consolidate power” before becoming unpopular.

“Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for us, he has become unpopular before he finished consolidating power,” Bassin said. “Ultimately, I think that is going to be our saving grace, because he is absolutely trying to do everything he can to tilt the playing field to rig these elections, but he’s no longer popular enough to get all of the actors and accomplices he needs throughout our distributed federal system to do it.”

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