MARIETTA — After more than a dozen years in the position, Cobb Elections Director Janine Eveler is stepping down on Friday.
“I’ve enjoyed it, but I really felt the weight of it, too,” Eveler said in an interview. “It’s hard work. And there’s a lot of people watching what you’re doing. And so you got to make sure as much as possible that you’re doing it right.”
After working in the elections office full-time for five years, Eveler was hired as elections director by the Board of Elections in 2010 to replace Sharon Dunn.
Since then, the one constant, she said, has been change.
Eveler has led the elections office as Georgia’s third largest county transitioned from majority-Republican to majority-Democratic. Cobb has added roughly 84,000 residents in that time.
In an era of increasing polarization, she’s also withstood withering criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Eveler has seen election laws be rewritten, new voting systems implemented, and public perceptions of elections shift. Her department has moved twice, and nearly all the staff she worked with in 2010 has turned over.
Board of Elections member Pat Gartland, an appointee of the Cobb GOP, called Eveler a “sharp lady” and “a class act.”
“She had so much responsibility, and as Cobb grew, she grew with it, and her staff grew, I believe,” Gartland said.
Second career
Eveler got involved with elections after moving here from California, where she worked for 22 years in the telecommunications industry. Searching for a job in her new home, she found that most telecoms jobs were located in Norcross. She and her family lived in Powder Springs.
She started working as a part-time seasonal clerk for Cobb elections shortly before the 2004 general election, but did not plan to make it her second career. Eveler spoke about getting the election “bug” after her…
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