Elections Director Paul Adams leaving to take job in Dallas County, Texas

After 22 years with Lorain County, Board of Elections Director Paul Adams is leaving his post. The Board of Elections announced Friday that Adams has taken the job of elections administrator at the Dallas County Elections Commission in Dallas. He was one of four finalists interviewed after a nationwide search, the board said in a news release. Adams starts his new job Oct. 1, he said Friday. "This was not an easy decision," Adams, a Democrat, said in the news release. "I have a lot of deep relationships and friendships here in the county that have been built over the years. I think we've done a great job as a bipartisan team at the Board of Elections building confidence in elections here in Lorain County over the last 15 years and that made it difficult, but this is an opportunity for me to be able to take a lot of the skills that I have learned here from so many other people in the elections administration field in Lorain County and outside of Lorain County ... to be able to take that to a much larger jurisdiction." The four-member Board of Elections — Republicans Marilyn Jacobcik, president, and member Mike Witte, and Democrats Anthony Giardini and Inez James — will begin the search process for a new director immediately, according to the news release. Dallas County has 1.4 million registered voters. Its five-member elections commission hired Adams to replace Elections Administrator Heider Garcia. Garcia resigned the job to take a private sector job, according to an Aug. 8 story in The Texas Tribune. His last day was Aug. 29, the Tribune reported. The Dallas County Election Commission officially named Adams its choice on Tuesday, KERA public radio reported. An Oberlin native and graduate of Clearview High School, Adams graduated from the Ohio State University and worked for a period of time at the Ohio Secretary of State's Office in Columbus. He joined the Lorain County Board of Elections as a staff member in 2003 and became the director in January 2010, replacing Jose Candelario, who left the post to run for state representative. As director, Adams oversaw an approximate $3.5 million budget, the board said. He got a certificate in election administration from the University of Minnesota for Election Administration in 2023. Lorain County has 223,257 registered voters. Adams also was the chairman of the Lorain City Democratic Party for 13 years until May, when he stepped down and was replaced by Mary Santiago. He also held positions on the county Democratic Central Committee, including Central Committee chairman, and Lorain County Democratic Party. In the elections board news release, Adams said what he would miss most about the job "is the strong bipartisan team at the Board of Elections. Any achievements I've had in the last 15 years are in large part due to their hard work and dedication." The Board of Elections said accomplishments during Adams' tenure as director included acquiring new voting systems, scanner and electronic pollbook systems; automating processing and assembly of mail-in absentee ballots; implementing a bilingual ballot and bilingual voting information required through a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice. He was named a member of the Ohio Voting Machine Acquisition Advisory Committee with state legislators in 2018; was elected to serve on the National Executive Committee of the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center from 2019-2021; and was named president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, the OAEO, from 2024-2025 "Paul has been a strong, competent and innovative director in Lorain County for 15 years," Jacobcik, herself a former Lorain County elections director, said in the news release. "He has also contributed at the state level as president of the OAEO, which has a strong voice in making Ohio the standard for elections officials all over the United States. I'm sorry to see Paul go, but I wish him well as he continues in his career. Our loss is Dallas County, Texas' gain."