Summit County honors Clerk Eve Furse ahead of retirement

Summit County Clerk Eve Furse has resigned effective April 8, triggering the process to appoint a replacement ahead of the November election. Photo: Summit County

Council praises elections, records, and public service work as Furse prepares to step down April 8.

SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah — The Summit County Council on Wednesday honored County Clerk Eve Furse ahead of her retirement, recognizing her five years of service overseeing elections, public records, marriage licenses, and business licensing.

In a proclamation read during the meeting, the council praised Furse for modernizing election administration, improving voter accessibility, and guiding the clerk’s office through a period of heightened public attention around voting and records access. The proclamation also noted that she sometimes opposed state legislative changes she believed would make voting less accessible and more expensive for counties to administer.

Furse’s tenure overlapped with the high-profile Dakota Pacific referendum dispute, which placed the clerk’s office at the center of a countywide debate over election law, petition standards, and voter access.

Furse was appointed Summit County clerk in 2021 to replace Kent Jones. Before that, she served as a U.S. magistrate judge for the District of Utah and previously worked as a senior attorney for Salt Lake City, according to the proclamation shared with the council.

As TownLift previously reported, Furse announced in March that she would resign effective April 8, setting in motion the process for the county to appoint someone to serve the remainder of her term before the office goes before voters in November.

Her final year in office also unfolded amid one of the county’s most contentious political disputes. TownLift reported extensively on the Dakota Pacific referendum fight, in which Furse’s office rejected thousands of signatures over questions about how petition packets were bound, a decision that triggered litigation, public criticism, and later scrutiny from state lawmakers.

The office is already attracting candidates’ interest. TownLift has reported that former Summit County Council Chair Malena Stevens entered the race for county clerk in December, and Oakley resident and business owner Suni Woolstenhulme announced her candidacy in January.

The proclamation itself focused less on controversy than on public service, thanking Furse for helping run transparent elections, maintain official records, and ensure continuity in the clerk’s office during a period of rapid change in county governance.