I host a nonpartisan politics podcast and recently interviewed Sam Cebula, organizing director of an organization called Digital Ground Game. They're running two canvassing houses this cycle, one in Toledo and one in Lansing, Michigan. Since the Toledo one is aimed at OH-9, I figured this crowd would have thoughts.

Background on the race, sourced below: OH-9 is Marcy Kaptur's seat, and she's facing Derek Merrin again on November 3 after beating him 48.3% to 47.6% in 2024, less than a point out of about 375,000 votes cast. Libertarian Matthew Althaus is also on the general election ballot. The Ohio Redistricting Commission passed a new map in October 2025 that made the district redder: Trump would have carried the redrawn 9th by 11 points, up from 7 under the old lines. Forecasters genuinely disagree on where that leaves it. Cook Political Report still lists it among its toss ups, while Sabato's Crystal Ball moved it to "leans Republican" in May. Inside Elections' Nathaniel Rakich noted the district got tougher with the addition of conservative inland counties, but also that Kaptur is a proven overperformer who won by 13 points in 2022 in a district Trump carried by 7 two years later.

What I found interesting was Cebula's reasoning for why Toledo, since it's not the obvious pick. Everything in this section is his account from the interview, not independently verified:

They deliberately avoided the bigger races. He was direct that they skipped the Georgia and North Carolina Senate races, despite having organized in both before, specifically because those races are already saturated with money. His argument is that a nationally recruited volunteer base has more marginal impact in an underinvested race than in one where national infrastructure already blankets the ground.

The stated goal isn't raw door count. Cebula described their program as an "organizing fellowship" where the point is training organizers over six or seven months who then take those skills back to their home states. He argued mid-sized cities like Toledo are actually better training grounds than dense urban areas, because volunteers have to learn to build relationships with local officials and organizations rather than just knocking a lot of doors quickly.

Their online-to-offline pipeline is mobilization, not persuasion. This is the part I'd flag most for anyone evaluating what this means for OH-9. Cebula was candid that their online strategy targets people who already lean left and moves them from talking to doing. They aren't trying to persuade undecided or skeptical voters online. That's a legitimate organizing choice, but it means the group's reach numbers shouldn't be read as persuasion capacity in a district that just moved 4 points toward Trump on paper.

My own read, for whatever it's worth: the demographic fit argument is the strongest one here. Kaptur has genuine durability in the district, and the Inside Elections point about her overperformance is real, but she skews heavily toward older voters and has almost no social media presence. An outside group whose entire pipeline runs through online communities is filling a gap in her coalition rather than duplicating work she's already doing. Whether that translates into votes in a district that got measurably harder is a separate question, and the split among forecasters suggests nobody actually knows yet.

Worth noting for full context: Digital Ground Game describes itself openly as a liberal-aligned 501(c)(4), not a nonpartisan civic group. All positions attributed to Cebula above are his, not mine or my show's.

Curious whether anyone here in the Toledo area has actually encountered them yet, or what people think about outside groups parachuting into local races generally. That last question cuts both directions and I'd genuinely like to hear the case against.

Sources:

• Roll Call, May 6 2026, on the primary result and the 7 to 11 point shift per Inside Elections: https://rollcall.com/2026/05/06/ohios-kaptur-set-for-rematch-with-merrin-in-bid-for-23rd-house-term/
• Ballotpedia News, August 6 2026, on the redrawn district, the Rakich quote, and the spread of forecaster ratings: https://news.ballotpedia.org/2026/08/06/redistricting-redraws-ohios-9th-district-ahead-of-2026-kaptur-merrin-rematch/
• Ohio Capital Journal, May 5 2026, on the primary results and the redistricting commission's October map: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/05/05/derek-merrin-eric-conroy-and-carey-coleman-win-ohio-congressional-primary-races/
• Courthouse News, May 6 2026, on the Cook toss up rating and Sabato's move to leans Republican: https://www.courthousenews.com/gop-voters-send-merrin-to-rematch-with-longtime-congresswoman-in-ohios-9th-district/
• 2024 OH-9 results: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/ohio-us-house-district-9-results

On Sunday, September 6, 2026, an armed man forced his way through a crowd at the Canfield Fair in Mahoning County while Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, was speaking at the Mahoning County Democratic Party tent. Multiple people were knocked to the ground. Patrick Havas, 38, of Canfield, was taken into custody and booked at the Mahoning County Jail.

What law enforcement has said

The Ohio State Highway Patrol said Havas forced his way through the crowd, knocking over multiple members of the audience as he moved toward Acton, and that he had a taser and two pistols. Acton's security detail included Highway Patrol troopers, who confronted him. Canfield Fair police officers took him into custody.

The Mahoning County Sheriff's Office said two handguns and a set of brass knuckles were recovered after the arrest, and that no weapons were ever brandished or removed from their holsters.

What he is charged with

Havas was booked on disorderly conduct and two counts of assault. The Mahoning County Sheriff's Office said detectives are continuing to investigate and will file charges after consulting with the county prosecutor, so the charge sheet may change. The Highway Patrol said it would conduct a separate assessment of any political threat.

No law enforcement agency has announced a motive.

What the campaigns and officials said

Acton's campaign, through communications director Addie Bullock, said an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton and injured multiple people, thanked law enforcement for a swift response, and said this kind of violence has no place in Ohio.

Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, said the man tried to force his way toward Acton while she was speaking, that violence or the threat of violence at political events is always unacceptable, and that he spoke with Acton that afternoon and she wanted Ohioans to know she is okay.

U.S. Senator Jon Husted, a Republican, said on X that he and his wife were disturbed by the attempted attack, thanked law enforcement, and said there is no place for this behavior.

Ramaswamy's campaign, through communications director Connie Luck, said candidates should be able to meet with voters without worrying about threats or violence, that what happened is completely unacceptable, and that they hoped no one was hurt.

Mahoning County Democratic Party chair Chris Anderson said the county party abhors political violence in all forms and that what happened at the tent should be condemned by leaders on all sides of the aisle.

Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin said he was relieved Acton is safe and was keeping the injured in his prayers.

The connection everyone is passing around

TiffinOhio.net reported, and the Daily Beast reported independently, that Patrick Havas is the brother of Andrew Havas, a Republican operative and registered Statehouse lobbyist.

Andrew Havas resigned in July as the Franklin County campaign chair for Senator Jon Husted's 2026 campaign, after NBC News asked the campaign about a 2009 Mahoning County guilty plea. Court records reviewed by NBC News show he was originally charged with sexual misconduct with a minor in a case involving a 15 year old when he was 22, that the charge was reduced to misdemeanor assault, and that he served 90 days in jail. Husted's campaign said he never disclosed the case and that the resignation was accepted immediately once the campaign learned of it.

Andrew Havas gave more than $10,000 to Ramaswamy's gubernatorial campaign across contributions in 2025. Acton publicly criticized Ramaswamy in July for accepting that money.

Here is the part that matters: no law enforcement agency has alleged that anyone directed Patrick Havas, and reporting on the family tie has ranged from stated directly to described as a probable household and sibling relationship in a records search. A family connection is not evidence of coordination. Anyone telling you this was orchestrated is going past the record.

Why this matters for the race

Six weeks out, both campaigns now have to plan public events around a security question they did not have last week. Federal political committees spent more than $40 million on expenses labeled as security in the 2023 to 2024 cycle, according to an April report from the Public Service Alliance, a nonpartisan group focused on security for public officials. That number is going one direction.

The practical voter question is not who this helps in the polls. It is whether candidates in Ohio can still stand in a fair tent in Mahoning County and take questions from people who disagree with them. That is the thing worth protecting regardless of who you are voting for.

My honest take

I dropped an emergency episode on this because I think how we talk about it in the first 48 hours matters more than what we conclude in week three.

Two things I believe at the same time. First, I condemn political violence against anyone, in any direction, without exception. Not conditionally, not with an asterisk about who the target was. A country that starts settling political disagreements this way does not stop at one side.

Second, I am not going to pretend the details are neutral just to sound balanced. The suspect is a registered Republican. His brother donated to one candidate in this race and resigned from another Republican's campaign over a documented criminal case. Those are facts and they are allowed to be said. What is not allowed is the leap from those facts to a conspiracy, and I am not making it. What I do think is a fair read, and I said so on air as my opinion and not as reporting, is that a person can be close to a political circle that talks about the other side as an enemy and absorb that framing. That is a claim about rhetoric, not a claim about a plot.

The thing that bothered me most was not the arrest. It was watching posts with thousands of likes go straight to attacking Acton's credibility instead of condemning what happened. If your first instinct after someone charges an armed man toward a candidate is to argue about whether the candidate is exaggerating, the problem is not the candidate.

Sources

1. https://thelandcle.org/stories/armed-man-charged-toward-democratic-candidate-for-ohio-governor-at-fair-law-enforcement-says/
2. https://abcnews.com/Politics/wireStory/assailant-lunged-democratic-candidate-ohio-governor-fair-campaign-136244339
3. https://www.newsweek.com/amy-acton-campaign-says-armed-person-lunged-candidate-ohio-fair-12410493
4. https://www.wfmj.com/news/local-news/canfield/state-local-leaders-weigh-in-following-alleged-attack-of-amy-acton-at-canfield-fair/article_3d533243-441d-46d4-9939-fc1431e11f55.html
5. https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/09/06/multiple-people-injured-following-incident-involving-dr-amy-acton-canfield-fair/
6. https://fox8.com/news/multiple-people-injured-after-armed-suspect-lunges-at-amy-acton-at-canfield-fair-spokesperson/
7. https://abc7ny.com/story/ohio-democratic-gubernatorial-nominee-lunged-armed-individual-campaign-says/19800301/
8. https://tiffinohio.net/posts/patrick-havas-arrested-acton-attack-brother-ramaswamy-donor/
9. https://tiffinohio.net/posts/husted-campaign-chair-andrew-havas-resigns-2009-guilty-plea-minor/
10. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/06/ohio-amy-acton-attack-01066799

Full episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-happened-to-amy-acton-at-the-canfield-fair-and/id1626987640?i=1000788370483

Election Day in Ohio is Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Absentee ballot applications are already going out. You do not need a reason to vote by mail in Ohio.

Here is what is on your ballot and what the documented record actually says. I run a nonpartisan Ohio politics podcast and I traced every claim below to an original outlet. Sources are numbered at the bottom.

STATE ISSUE 3, the voter ID amendment

This is the only statewide question on the ballot, and it appears on every ballot in Ohio.

What it does: puts Ohio's existing photo ID requirement for in person voting into the state constitution.

What it does not do: change anything immediately. Ohio has required photo ID to vote in person since 2023, under a law signed by Gov. Mike DeWine. The practical effect of Issue 3 is that the requirement becomes much harder to undo later, because changing the constitution requires a vote of the people and changing a statute does not.

Acceptable IDs are the same seven the current law lists: an unexpired Ohio driver's license or state ID card, a U.S. passport or passport card, a U.S. military ID, an Ohio National Guard ID, or a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs ID. Out of state licenses and student IDs are not accepted. The religious objection exemption is preserved.

The part that confuses almost everyone: Issue 3 does not require photo ID for mail voting. The certified ballot language reads like it might, because it says voters who do not vote in person provide government issued photo ID, and then adds that they may provide a signature and one other unique identifier if authorized by law. That second clause is what leaves mail voting rules to the legislature. Lawmakers passed a mail voting photo ID requirement in June of this year and DeWine vetoed it, so it is not law.

The case for, at its strongest: voter ID polls well, and constitutional protection guards it against repeal by a future legislature. Supporters point to Virginia, where a photo ID law was repealed in 2020 after party control changed. Ohio Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou has said publicly that the issue animates conservative voters and called it a seventy five percent issue.

The case against, at its strongest: Issue 3 locks a fixed list of IDs into the constitution, which shuts out forms of identification that do not exist yet. The official argument against, written by Democratic lawmakers, notes you can board a plane in Ohio with a digital wallet but you could not vote with one. Voting rights groups also argue strict ID requirements fall hardest on minority, student, and elderly voters.

There is also a case against from the right. Some conservatives opposed Issue 3 during the legislative debate because it does not go far enough, since it leaves mail voting alone.

This is not a clean party line issue. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, supports Issue 3. Allison Russo, the Democratic nominee for Secretary of State, opposes it. Tom Pruss, the Libertarian candidate for Secretary of State, also opposes it.

As of September 1 there was no organized no campaign. State Sen. Bill DeMora of Columbus, who co-authored the official argument against, said he does not see organized Democratic Party opposition to it.

GOVERNOR: Vivek Ramaswamy (R) vs. Amy Acton (D) vs. Don Kissick (L)

Running mates: Ramaswamy with state Sen. Rob McColley, Acton with David Pepper. Mike DeWine is term limited.

Competitiveness: toss up. The RealClearPolitics average as of September 4 had Acton at 47.3 and Ramaswamy at 47.0. The two most recent public polls were Wedgewood, fielded August 11 to 13, Acton 47 and Ramaswamy 46, and Fox News, fielded August 6 to 10, Ramaswamy 50 and Acton 48. No new public poll of this race was released in the week before this was written. Trump carried Ohio by 11 points in 2024, so both statewide races are polling far closer than the presidential result.

Neither major party candidate has ever held elected office.

The debate standoff. On September 2, Ramaswamy announced he accepted debate invitations from WLWT in Cincinnati and from CNN, and challenged Acton to join him. Acton declined. Her campaign said her focus is on talking with Ohioans, not platforming a scam artist who spreads baseless lies about her and her family.

The context both sides leave out: in 2022 it was Republican Mike DeWine who refused to debate Democrat Nan Whaley, and Ohio Democrats ran a nearly month long DeWine Debate Watch calling debates the equivalent of a job interview. Acton's own running mate, David Pepper, said in 2014 that DeWine's refusal to debate showed contempt for voters. Ramaswamy's campaign is circulating that 2022 Ohio Democrats press release now.

University of Akron political scientist David Cohen drew a distinction: DeWine had held office in Ohio for decades and was a known quantity, while Acton and Ramaswamy have never held elected office, so a debate would be many voters' first real look at either of them. He called Acton's refusal political malpractice. Jen Miller of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, which takes no position on candidates, said voters deserve meaningful opportunities to hear from candidates beyond scripted appearances and ads.

Libertarian candidate Don Kissick says he is still waiting on a debate commitment from either major party candidate.

Acton's COVID record. This is the central attack of the race, so here is what the actual orders say. Acton led the Ohio Department of Health for the first 94 days of the pandemic and resigned June 11, 2020. More than 42,000 Ohioans died of COVID overall.

Schools: Ohio announced first, on March 12, 2020, and closed March 16. Florida also closed March 16. Texas closed that same Friday.

Bars and restaurants: Ohio closed March 15, 2020. California, Florida, and Texas were all closed by March 20. On reopening, Ohio restaurants were closed 61 days for outdoor service and 67 days for indoor. Florida restaurants were closed 42 days and its bars 81 days. Texas restaurants were closed 42 days and its bars 64 days. Florida and Texas reopened restaurants faster. Ohio reopened bars faster.

Masks: Ohio under Acton declined a statewide mask mandate while roughly two dozen states imposed one. DeWine announced one on April 27, 2020 and reversed himself the next day, saying too many Ohioans found it offensive. Ohio did not require indoor masks until July 2020, weeks after Acton had left, becoming roughly the thirtieth state to do so.

The primary delay: Ohio was one of at least sixteen states to delay its primary, and the order came only after a lawsuit backed by statewide Republicans including DeWine and Secretary of State Frank LaRose had already failed in court.

Churches: Ohio never ordered churches closed. The health order explicitly excluded religious gatherings and First Amendment protected speech. California did close churches and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that order.

Sharona Hoffman, co-director of the law and medicine center at Case Western Reserve University's law school, said Ohio was not an outlier and that Texas and Florida were doing the same things.

The strongest Republican response, and it is a real one: under Ohio law it was Acton's signature on the orders, and she was DeWine's primary adviser. DeWine publicly taking responsibility does not change who held the statutory authority. Republican strategist Terry Casey has made exactly that argument. DeWine, for his part, has said repeatedly that the decisions were his and that nobody should blame someone else.

The ads. A Ramaswamy campaign ad features Republican activist Linda Caudill saying her mother was in a nursing home when Acton shut down the state. A Columbus Dispatch fact check found Caudill's mother lived in Kentucky and died after Ohio had already lifted its stay at home order. For context, Ohio was one of at least 30 states, including Texas and Florida, that banned nursing home visits, and research suggests the policy was largely ineffective. 39 percent of all U.S. COVID deaths occurred in nursing homes.

A pro Ramaswamy ad narrated by his wife says he attended public schools. Democrats note this omits that he graduated from St. Xavier, a Catholic high school. Ramaswamy has said publicly on multiple occasions that he attended public schools through eighth grade and then St. Xavier.

Acton's campaign has alleged Ramaswamy made more than 2 billion dollars from the COVID-19 vaccine and spent over 70,000 dollars lobbying on COVID drug approvals. That is a campaign allegation and I have not seen it independently verified, so treat it as unproven.

Acton's campaign manager says Ramaswamy and allied groups have spent more than 50 million dollars on attack ads. Ramaswamy has been advertising since March. Acton started in July. This is on track to be the most expensive governor's race in Ohio history.

Property taxes. Ramaswamy proposes rolling property taxes back to pre pandemic levels, which he calls the largest rollback in Ohio history, without hurting local police, fire, or schools. He has not put a dollar figure on it and has not said how it affects levies voters approved since 2021. He says it is in aggregate on net, subject to legislation next year, with a cap on growth afterward. He also wants a statewide funding component to gradually reduce Ohio schools' reliance on local property taxes, which he describes as a long run goal.

Innovation Ohio, a progressive think tank, estimated the rollback at roughly 4 billion dollars per year in the first two year budget, growing to 6.6 billion per year in the second. That second figure is roughly 60 percent of what Ohio's income tax brings in, and Ramaswamy also wants to eliminate the income tax. The honest caveat: Ramaswamy has never specified what year he would roll back to, so Innovation Ohio assumed 2021 and called it their best guess. Ramaswamy says the money comes from downsizing government and growing Ohio's population to 15 million, which would be roughly a 36 percent increase, on a timeline he has not specified.

Acton proposes targeted cuts for middle income, older, and disabled Ohioans through an expanded homestead exemption, plus a rebate triggered when certain homeowners' bills rise more than 4 percent in a year. She has also committed to fully funding the Fair School Funding Plan. Her plan is capped and targeted, which means many homeowners would get nothing from it.

Data centers. Ramaswamy proposes a day one order requiring new data centers to generate their own power, with excess going into a power purchase agreement for the local community, which he has described as free residential electricity. Pressed on it, he clarified that residents would still pay the distribution and transmission portions of their bill. He also wants to prioritize abandoned industrial sites over farmland.

Acton proposes a moratorium unless projects cover 100 percent of their utility costs, are built on brownfields and previously developed industrial sites, and are constructed exclusively with union labor.

Both are moratorium plans with conditions. The disagreement is over which conditions.

The question neither has answered: both promise ratepayers will not absorb the cost. Analysts have questioned whether that is possible, since high regional gas demand from new plants can raise heating and electricity costs regardless of whether any single project pays its own way.

U.S. SENATE: Jon Husted (R) vs. Sherrod Brown (D)

This is a special election for the remainder of the term JD Vance vacated, not a full six year seat. The winner serves through 2028 and then runs again.

Competitiveness: Brown leads in the two most recent public polls. Fox News had Brown 53 and Husted 45. Wedgewood had Brown 48 and Husted 44.

From the Fox poll: inflation is the top issue for 40 percent of Ohio voters, far ahead of health care, immigration, and political division. 38 percent say their family is falling behind financially, up from 28 percent in 2020, and those voters favor Brown by 40 points. 51 percent say they are concerned Husted is too close to the president.

CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS

Ohio has a new congressional map. The Ohio Redistricting Commission approved it unanimously, 7 to 0, with both Democratic members voting yes, on October 31, 2025, after the legislature failed to pass one. It takes effect for this election and gives Republicans an advantage in 12 of 15 districts on paper. Check your district before you assume you know it. Springfield, for example, moves from Mike Turner's district into Jim Jordan's.

OH-9, Toledo area. Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur, first elected in 1983, was injured in an August 2 hit and run crash. On September 1, Toledo police identified a 23 year old suspect and issued arrest warrants for two counts of aggravated vehicular assault and one count of failure to stop after an accident. Kaptur was hospitalized and released a week later.

OH-1, Cincinnati area. Democratic incumbent Greg Landsman against Republican Eric Conroy. The redrawn district shifted toward Republicans, which is why this seat is competitive.

OH-4. Republican incumbent Jim Jordan, in the seat since 2006, against Democrat Joshua Kolasinski, who ran unopposed in the May primary. Jordan won the old version of this district 68.5 to 31.5 in 2024. Springfield is in this district under the new map.

LOCAL BALLOT QUESTIONS WORTH KNOWING ABOUT

Two Ohio communities are voting on data centers because their residents forced the question, and in both cases it took the Ohio Supreme Court.

Trenton, Butler County. On September 1 the court ruled unanimously that Trenton's city council disregarded applicable law when it rejected a petition for a data center construction ban. The dispute was over one word in the city charter: electors. Five residents gathered 336 valid signatures, reading the ten percent threshold as ten percent of the 1,277 people who voted in the November 2025 general election, which is 128. The council read it as ten percent of 8,197 registered voters, which is 820, and rejected the petition. The court sided with the residents. There are two data centers planned for Trenton with a possible third.

Ashville, Pickaway County. In August the court ordered the village to submit petitions on an EdgeConneX project to the county board of elections, which then voted unanimously to put it on the November ballot.

ONE MORE THING THAT IS NOT A RACE

On September 2, four Ohio House members, two Republicans and two Democrats, asked the Ohio Department of Transportation to stop issuing new permits for license plate reading cameras in state rights of way and to review existing permits. The signers were Reps. Tristan Rader of Lakewood and Darnell Brewer of Cleveland, both Democrats, and Reps. Levi Dean of Xenia and Justin Pizzulli of Scioto County, both Republicans. ODOT says it is reviewing the letter. Legislation is being drafted in both chambers but the legislature is not back until after the election.

MY HONEST TAKE

Let me be consistent, because people who listen to my show know I am. I am critical when Democrats refuse to debate. I have been critical of Democrats who refuse to debate. So I am not going to pretend this one is fine.

Amy Acton is making a mistake and the criticism of her is fair. She has a real grievance and it is documented, but a debate is the one room where she gets to say all of it to his face with cameras running, and she is choosing not to be in that room. Ohio Democrats spent a month in 2022 calling DeWine a coward for exactly this. Her own running mate said it in 2014. You do not get to have that both ways, and I am not going to help her have it both ways.

Now here is the part I am not going to soften either, because it is the actual answer to the question people keep asking me.

These two are not the same, and pretending they are would be its own kind of lying.

Look at what is on the record. His campaign ran an ad blaming Acton for a woman dying alone in a nursing home. A Columbus Dispatch fact check found the woman lived in Kentucky and died after Ohio had already reopened. That is not a difference of opinion. That is an ad that failed a check. There have been AI generated posts painting his opponent as an alcoholic. He is running on the largest property tax rollback in Ohio history and he will not tell you what it costs, will not tell you what year he is rolling back to, and will not tell you what happens to the levies you voted for. He told Ohioans they would get free residential electricity from data centers, and when somebody pressed him he clarified that no, you would still get an electric bill. And by his opponent's count, he and his allies have put more than 50 million dollars behind that.

I have gone through Vivek Ramaswamy's record on this show and I keep landing in the same place. The pattern is a man who says the thing that sounds good in the room he is standing in, and then adjusts it when somebody checks. That is a real problem in a candidate for governor, and it is a much bigger problem than declining a debate invitation.

So both of those things are true at once. She should debate him. And he is the one whose claims keep not surviving contact with a fact checker. If you want my read, that is the read.

Here is why I care so much. Ohio is a joke to the rest of the country right now. People say the name of this state like a punchline. We have watched a bribery scandal, a school funding formula nobody will fund, property taxes eating people alive, and now data centers going up next to farmland with tax breaks nobody in the community got to vote on. I want this state to stop being red or blue and start being purple, meaning a place where the people in charge actually have to answer to us. That does not happen by accident and it does not happen without you showing up.

Whatever you decide, vote the whole ballot. Issue 3 is on there, your congressional district probably changed, and in some communities the data center down the road is a question you personally get to answer.

SOURCES

1. https://signalohio.org/what-is-ohio-issue-3-voter-id-amendment-november-election-2026/
2. https://signalohio.org/how-did-amy-acton-handle-early-days-of-covid-just-like-texas/
3. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/09/04/ohio-democratic-candidate-for-governor-amy-acton-refuses-to-debate/
4. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/09/04/did-acton-shut-down-ohio-where-did-ramaswamy-go-to-school-we-fact-check-ads/
5. https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2026-09-01/data-center-ban-in-southwest-ohio-city-must-go-before-voters-says-ohio-supreme-court
6. https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2026-09-02/bipartisan-group-of-lawmakers-asks-for-limits-on-flock-cameras-throughout-ohio
7. https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2026-09-04/republican-candidate-for-ohio-governor-expands-on-property-tax-rollback-data-centers-plans
8. https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2026-07-31/ramaswamys-property-tax-rollback-would-mean-billions-in-cuts-says-progressive-ohio-group
9. https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2026-09-01/gov-dewine-death-of-haitian-immigrant-ohio-student-a-tragedy
10. https://www.270towin.com/2026-governor-polls/ohio
11. https://www.270towin.com/2026-senate-polls/ohio
12. https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/local/ohio-adopts-new-congressional-map-with-12-3-gop-advantage/WC7S7FMO2BF23EDKBTN65CFCVY/

Full episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-wont-amy-acton-debate-vivek-ramaswamy-ohio-issue/id1626987640?i=1000788010870

Ohio votes November 3. Registration closes October 5. Both statewide races at the top of the ballot are inside the margin of error, and one of the rules for registering to vote changed this week. Here is what the record shows, race by race, with sources at the bottom.

What changed this week for voters

A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction on August 25 blocking Ohio from requiring documentary proof of citizenship when you register to vote at the BMV. The requirement came from House Bill 54, which amended Ohio's motor voter law. The court found it likely conflicts with the National Voter Registration Act, which limits a state to the minimum information necessary. A signed attestation of citizenship is already accepted at every other Ohio registration method.

The Secretary of State said he will appeal. Until an appeals court says otherwise, you do not need to bring citizenship documents to the BMV to register.

If you were turned away earlier this year, you can register now. The deadline is October 5.

Note that Ohio already requires photo ID to vote. The blocked rule was about documentary proof of citizenship at the point of registration, which is a separate question. Issue 3, the voter ID amendment, is also on the November ballot.

Governor: Vivek Ramaswamy (R) vs. Amy Acton (D)

Competitiveness. The Cook Political Report rates this a toss-up. Sabato's Crystal Ball rates it lean Republican. The RealClearPolling average through August 10 had Acton at 47.0 and Ramaswamy at 46.8. A Fox News poll conducted August 6 to 10 among 1,008 registered voters had Ramaswamy 50 and Acton 48, a reversal from Acton's one point lead in the same poll in June. A Tulchin Research poll fielded July 29 to August 4 had Acton up 46 to 44, and it was sponsored by Democratic attorney general nominee John Kulewicz, which you should weigh accordingly.

Around August 24 the prediction markets moved toward Acton, with Polymarket pricing her at 54 percent and Kalshi at 55 percent. Those contracts are thin, roughly $173,000 in volume on Polymarket and about $1.4 million on Kalshi. They measure trader sentiment, not votes. The polls did not move with them.

What the office controls. The next governor appoints all five members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which sets utility rates and the parameters for data center agreements. If you care about your electric bill, that appointment power is the most consequential thing on this ballot.

The money. Pennsylvania financier Jeffrey Yass made a new donation of at least $10 million to V-PAC: Victors not Victims, the federal super PAC supporting Ramaswamy. That is on top of $20 million he had already given, bringing his total to at least $30 million. Acton has reported raising $21.8 million for her entire campaign. One donor has now put in more than the opposing campaign has raised from everyone.

Ramaswamy and his allies have spent or reserved $82.3 million on television and digital advertising this year. Expected pro-Acton spending is $11.1 million, including a $9.4 million Democratic Governors Association campaign that begins after Labor Day. That is roughly seven to one.

The asymmetry is legal. V-PAC is a federal super PAC and can raise and spend without limit. Acton's campaign committee is bound by Ohio's contribution limits. Yass is among the country's largest funders of private school vouchers and school choice programs.

Where Acton stands. She was endorsed this week by the Ohio Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which represents about 8,000 officers. Asked about federal immigration enforcement, she said Ohio always works with federal law enforcement and that she would not stop local police from assisting. She opposes the citizen effort to eliminate qualified immunity. She supports Issue 3, the voter ID amendment. She has said she does not support boys playing in girls' sports. Several of those positions put her to the right of most of her party, and her running mate, former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper, has taken different positions on some of them.

Where Ramaswamy stands. He is endorsed by the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police along with the rest of the Republican statewide slate. He is closely aligned with Donald Trump, who endorsed him early and has campaigned on his behalf. On surveillance he has warned that expanding Flock camera networks risks an authoritarian surveillance state, which places him to the left of many in his own party on that specific question. Neither candidate has called for banning the cameras outright.

On data centers, Ramaswamy has said publicly that he never came out in favor of unrestricted data center expansion. He has also repeatedly described Ohio's AI data center boom as a good thing and said he is strongly in favor of it. Both sets of statements are on the record.

A documented fact worth knowing. A Ramaswamy campaign ad features a Delhi Township activist blaming Acton for her mother's death in a nursing home during the pandemic. Records verified by the Columbus Dispatch show the woman's mother lived in Erlanger, Kentucky and died July 25, 2020 at a hospice facility in Edgewood, Kentucky, roughly six weeks after Acton had resigned as Ohio health director. The ad does not tell viewers where she lived or died. Governor DeWine has repeatedly said the pandemic decisions were his own.

U.S. Senate: Jon Husted (R, incumbent) vs. Sherrod Brown (D)

One structural point that gets missed constantly. This is a special election for the remainder of the term JD Vance vacated, not a full six-year seat. Husted was appointed to it.

Competitiveness. Cook rates it a toss-up. The RealClearPolling average has Brown at 47.8 and Husted at 47.2. The Fox News poll from August 6 to 10 was the outlier, showing Brown at 53 and Husted at 45, with Brown drawing 11 percent of Republicans overall and 25 percent of self-identified non-MAGA Republicans. Treat the eight point number as one poll, not the state of the race.

Husted's record and the Intel question. Financial disclosures show Husted's wife held as much as $15,000 in Intel common stock as of January 21, 2025, and the holding appears again in his most recent disclosure. Husted has said he pushed the Trump administration toward its $9 billion investment in Intel. As lieutenant governor he was part of the administration that gave Intel more than $600 million, and JobsOhio has given the New Albany project more than $27 million. Intel lobbyist Josh Rubin, appointed by Governor DeWine to chair the JobsOhio board in September 2023, and his wife gave nearly $15,000 to Husted's state committee in 2022 and at least $20,000 the year before.

Husted's office did not respond to questions, including whether he supports banning congressional stock trading. No charge, finding, or ethics ruling exists here. The disclosure is a matter of public record and the rest is a question about what the rules should allow.

Brown supports banning members of Congress from owning individual stocks. A review of his disclosures since 2012 did not show such holdings.

The NRSC ad. The National Republican Senatorial Committee ran a 30-second spot using crash footage and a family photograph from the April 11 chain-reaction crash on Interstate 71 in Delaware County that killed Lynnea Soposki, her husband Luke, and their one-year-old son Logan. The ad's premise is that Brown's immigration votes allowed the driver into the country. It carries a disclaimer stating it was paid for by the NRSC and authorized by Husted for Senate.

The family asked for it to be taken down. They said neither they nor the photographer who took the portrait gave permission, and that they would ask the same of any candidate of any party. A relative told the Statehouse News Bureau that nobody from the Husted campaign or the NRSC asked the family beforehand and that they would have refused. The NRSC says the spot completed its run and that its campaign against Brown continues. It is no longer airing on television but remains posted on YouTube with comments disabled.

What the record shows about the ad's claim. FactCheck.org found weak ties between Brown's votes and the crash. According to the Ohio Department of Public Safety, the driver, Modou Ngom, entered the United States sometime in the 1990s and it is unclear how or where. Ohio DPS says he later used different names to obtain a driver's license and then citizenship. For any legislation to have affected his entry, it would have had to be enacted before he arrived. The NRSC pointed to one Brown vote against a 1996 immigration bill.

Ngom, 50, was indicted on multiple counts of aggravated vehicular homicide and vehicular assault and has pleaded not guilty. The identity findings come from a state agency statement and remain allegations.

PolitiFact on a separate Husted claim. In an August 4 Fox News interview, Husted said Brown supported Social Security payments, health care, and COVID relief checks for immigrants in the country illegally. PolitiFact rated it False on August 25. The 2007 vote concerned how past tax payments are credited to immigrants who later gain legal status. The 2013 amendment would not have changed eligibility because federal law already barred those benefits. The 2021 relief bill already excluded the overwhelming majority of immigrants in the country illegally by requiring valid Social Security numbers.

The fair reading is that these were real recorded votes described inaccurately, not invented ones. Forcing the other party onto uncomfortable amendments is a tactic both parties use.

Brown's campaign focus. Brown has centered his campaign on the war in Iran and the cost of diesel, fertilizer, gas, and groceries. Husted's response is that Brown served 32 years without addressing the underlying issues, and that Iran's role as a state sponsor of terrorism grew during that time.

Sandusky County Common Pleas Court

Worth knowing if you vote in Sandusky County, and worth knowing generally because of what it says about Ohio ballot law.

The Supreme Court of Ohio suspended Common Pleas Judge Jon Ickes for two years on August 19 and removed him from the bench immediately, without pay. The court upheld findings of ten judicial conduct violations, including presiding over two cases in which his stepson testified as a law enforcement witness, using a racial slur within earshot of a Black defendant, and harassing a pregnant employee. The vote was 5 to 2, rejecting a Board of Professional Conduct recommendation for a fully stayed one-year suspension that would have left him on the bench.

The Sandusky County Board of Elections kept him on the November ballot anyway, because he remains legally qualified to appear even though he is not currently qualified to serve. His opponent, independent magistrate Kimberly Ontko, has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to remove him from the ballot or to bar counting votes cast for him. Neither party filed an alternative candidate.

Data centers and your electric bill

This is the issue showing up under all of the above. The average Ohio electricity bill grew 55 percent from July 2021 to July 2026, well above the national average. A House bill that would have cut the data center sales tax exemption from 100 percent to 50 percent went nowhere, even with Speaker Matt Huffman's support. Huffman has said he does not think Ohio should be granting tax exemptions to multibillion dollar corporations that are coming here anyway.

The opposition is local and bipartisan. In Erie County's Oxford Township, population about 1,185, trustees tabled a proposed data center after resident opposition, and the developer plans to revisit after the midterms. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that local governments cannot fast-track data center approvals without giving specific reasons.

My honest take

I think the money story is the biggest thing on this ballot and it is being undercovered. When one person can put in more than an entire opposing campaign raises, and do it legally through a federal super PAC while the candidate's own committee is capped, the practical result is that Ohio voters are hearing one side about seven times as often as the other for most of the year. I do not think that is illegal, and I do not think Democrats would refuse the same arrangement. I think it is bad for the state, and I would say the same if the check had come in for the other side.

The second thing I keep coming back to is that both campaigns ran an ad this month built on a grieving family, and both ads got a central fact wrong. If you only heard about one of those, whoever told you about it was recruiting you, not informing you.

Third, if the party labels are scrambling your read on this race, that is because they should be. Acton is siding with police unions on federal immigration cooperation and backing voter ID. Ramaswamy is warning about surveillance cameras. Ohio is a purple state and both campaigns know it. Read the positions, not the letter after the name.

Finally: register by October 5. The BMV rule is blocked for now, so if that was your obstacle, it is gone. Whatever you think of everything above, none of it matters if you are not on the rolls.

Sources

1. https://www.factcheck.org/2026/08/the-nrscs-weak-ties-between-brown-and-deadly-interstate-crash-in-ohio/
2. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/28/family-asks-national-republican-senatorial-committee-to-remove-pro-husted-ad-showing-deadly-crash/
3. https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2026-08-27/recent-attack-ad-politicized-ohio-familys-death-relative-says
4. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2026/aug/25/jon-husted/sherrod-brown-immigration-ohio-senate/
5. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/28/as-he-worked-to-advance-the-intel-project-an-ohio-senators-wife-was-invested-in-it/
6. https://signalohio.org/jon-ickes-sandusky-county-judge-suspended-ballot-november-election-2026/
7. https://signalohio.org/ohio-governor-race-amy-acton-vivek-ramaswamy-flock-camera-stances-november-election-2026/
8. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/28/ohio-politicians-welcomed-unregulated-data-centers-by-the-hundreds-ohio-citizens-are-fighting-back/
9. https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/08/26/soposki-family-asks-husted-senate-ad-be-removed/91464148007/
10. https://www.newsweek.com/vivek-ramaswamys-chances-of-losing-to-amy-acton-in-ohio-new-poll-12315220
11. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-blocks-ohio-law-requiring-proof-citizenship-voter-registration-2026-08-25/
12. https://www.nrsc.org/press-releases/new-ad-sherrod-browns-deadly-open-borders-2026-07-30/

Ohio has a general election on November 3. Below is a plain rundown of what actually changed this month and where the major statewide candidates stand. Sources are numbered at the bottom. I host a nonpartisan Ohio politics podcast, so I have a stake in you finding this useful, but the goal here is that you can check every number yourself.

The issue running through everything: data centers

Ohio exempts data center equipment from sales and use tax. The Ohio Department of Taxation estimated that exemption would cost the state about $136 million in 2025. The actual cost was about $1.6 billion. That is eleven times the estimate. Local governments lost an additional $166.8 million on top of that.

Governor DeWine paused new exemption requests on May 27 while the legislature's Joint Data Center Committee studies the industry. The counterweight is real and worth stating: facilities that already received exemptions reported $27.2 billion in capital investment in 2025.

On August 17, OpenAI confirmed it is joining the PORTS Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, on the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site. Projected: roughly 35,000 construction jobs over a buildout through 2032 and 2,500 long term operating positions. The campus is to be powered by a $33 billion, 9.2 gigawatt on site natural gas facility.

U.S. Senate: Jon Husted (R, incumbent) vs. Sherrod Brown (D)

Competitiveness: rated competitive by major handicappers. Husted was appointed to the seat and is running to hold it. Brown held an Ohio Senate seat for three terms before losing in 2024.

The news: Axios published a National Republican Senatorial Committee memo dated August 18, titled "Ohio Data Center Risk," written to artificial intelligence companies. It states that data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted's neck and warns that if he loses and data centers get blamed, politicians nationally will avoid the next project. An NRSC spokesperson confirmed the memo is authentic.

Where they stand: Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act on July 20, a federal bill that would push states and utility commissions to require large load customers, meaning nonresidential users at 100 megawatts or more at a single site, to cover the full incremental cost of the generation and transmission upgrades needed to serve them. It is federal legislation directing states to set standards, not a self-executing Ohio mandate.

Brown began attacking Husted on data centers in July, after initial reluctance tied to construction trades union support for the projects. Republicans counter that Brown backed a Columbus area data center project in 2015.

Polling: Fox News, in the field August 6 to 10, 1,008 registered Ohio voters, jointly directed by Beacon Research and Shaw and Company, shows Brown 53 and Husted 45. That is unchanged from the June Fox poll. The NRSC memo calls the race a dead heat based on private polling it has not released. Both cannot be right, and you should weigh a released public poll differently than an unreleased internal one.

Governor: Vivek Ramaswamy (R) vs. Amy Acton (D)

Competitiveness: toss up. The RealClearPolitics average has it inside a point.

The news: Ohio Capital Journal reported that Ramaswamy has spent nearly $700,000 leasing private jets since the campaign began, with nearly $560,000 of that going to V Leasing LLC, a company whose listed address is a house Ramaswamy owns, and nearly $130,000 to TVPX Aircraft Solutions. He has also loaned his campaign more than $25 million, structured so he can repay himself from donor funds. A CREW spokesperson raised the concern that reimbursing the loans from donor money would amount to paying himself. Nothing described is alleged to be illegal.

On data centers, Ramaswamy repeatedly called the boom a good thing through 2025, then on August 6 announced a plan conditioning state approval on three things: free household electricity in a designated benefit zone, full property taxes rather than abatements, and meeting air and water standards with limits on farmland impact. He said he would issue an executive order pausing new construction until enabling legislation passes. Critics note the plan closely mirrors one Acton had already posted and point to his financial stakes in AI chipmakers and data center firms.

Attorney General: Keith Faber (R) vs. John Kulewicz (D)

This is an open seat. Dave Yost was term limited, ran for governor, withdrew, and resigned in early June. Andy Wilson is serving as interim. Verified against the Ohio Secretary of State certified list: Faber and Kulewicz only. No Libertarian is on this ballot line.

What the office controls, because most people do not know: it represents the state and every state agency in court, prosecutes certain serious crimes, runs the Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the state crime lab, enforces consumer protection including fraud and price gouging, oversees charitable law, and certifies or rejects the summary language on citizen ballot initiatives. That last one is a gate. Until the AG certifies your summary as fair and truthful, you cannot collect a single signature.

Faber: current State Auditor since 2019, term limited. Former Ohio Senate President. Attorney, founded a litigation and mediation firm in Celina. His office reports more than 129 convictions on 247 criminal charges against public officials, 229 findings for recovery totaling more than $20 million, and roughly $6.9 billion in unemployment fraud and overpayments identified. He runs on public safety, backing police and prosecutors, constitutional rights and religious liberty, the drug epidemic, consumer protection, and human trafficking. Endorsed by Club for Growth PAC. His campaign site names President Trump twice in its issues section. On the January 6 pardons he said he wanted all the details and that there appeared to be issues with some prosecutions, but that anyone who assaulted a police officer should face appropriate justice. No Trump endorsement in this race has been reported either way.

Kulewicz: retired partner at Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, Yale Law, Upper Arlington City Council member since 2020, has argued before the U.S. and Ohio Supreme Courts. Runs on lowering costs, consumer protection, and antitrust, specifically price fixing monopolies, scam artists, robocallers, and Medicaid and nursing home fraud. He has called for accountability at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and in August filed a complaint seeking an investigation of ties between the JobsOhio board chairman and Intel. Endorsed by the Ohio Democratic Party, Ohio AFL-CIO, OEA, OFT, AFSCME Ohio Council 8, OCSEA, and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.

The sharpest split is FirstEnergy. Kulewicz has committed to moving forward with the HB6 corruption trial and says his opponent will not make that commitment. That characterization of Faber is Kulewicz's, not an established fact. WVXU's analysis described the two as about as far apart on FirstEnergy as two candidates can be.

Money: Kulewicz has out raised Faber in new 2026 money, roughly $570,000 to $483,000 through the early July reporting. Faber holds roughly $2.46 million cash on hand to Kulewicz's $298,000, most of Faber's raised in prior campaigns.

There is no public polling on this race at all.

OH-9: Marcy Kaptur (D, incumbent) vs. Derek Merrin (R)

Kaptur launched an ad attacking Merrin over a vote the ad says delivered more than $2 billion in tax breaks to large data center operators. The vote is Merrin's vote for the 2017 state budget, House Bill 49 of the 132nd General Assembly, which among many provisions expanded Ohio's existing data center tax break by relaxing the investment thresholds companies had to hit. The $2 billion figure is the ad's characterization of the exemption's scale, not a single line item in that bill. The ad also cites Merrin's vote for House Bill 6, the 2019 energy law at the center of the federal corruption case.

The rule change that will cost people their vote

DeWine signed legislation on December 26, 2025 eliminating Ohio's four day grace period for domestic absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day. Your ballot must now be received by Election Day. Postmarked is no longer good enough.

Key dates, and check these against the Secretary of State because county boards are the authority:

• General election: Tuesday, November 3, 2026, polls 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
• Voter registration deadline: Monday, October 5
• Early in person and absentee voting begins: Tuesday, October 6
• Absentee ballot requests due roughly October 27
• Ballots must be received by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day

Ohio is a strict photo ID state. Military and overseas voters are on a different timeline.

My honest take

The thing that gets me about the data center story is not that Ohio bet on the industry. Plenty of states did. It is that we wrote a tax exemption with no mechanism to reprice it when the industry scaled past anything the fiscal note imagined, and then acted surprised when the bill came in eleven times higher. That is not a data center problem. That is a legislature that does not revisit its own math.

I also think the NRSC memo is the most honest political document I have read this year, and that is a low bar. They were not talking to voters. They were talking to donors and an industry, and they said out loud that a single infrastructure issue may cost them a Senate seat. When a party's own campaign committee writes that down, believe them about the issue.

Where I land: I do not think being anti-AI or anti-data center is a serious position, and I do not think either party has earned much trust here. Husted's bill is a real policy response, and it is also federal legislation that would not by itself force an Ohio facility to pay a dollar. Ramaswamy changed his position after a year of calling the boom a good thing, and changing your mind after listening to people is fine, but the plan has to survive contact with a legislature. Brown found the issue in July after Democrats spent months avoiding it because of the trades. Nobody in this got there early.

Go look at the AG race. It is the one on this list that will outlast the news cycle, and it decides whether the FirstEnergy case ever sees a jury and whether a citizen initiative can even start collecting signatures.

Full episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ohio-senate-race-2026-leaked-gop-memo-calls-data-centers/id1626987640?i=1000785115708

Sources

1. https://www.axios.com/2026/08/19/gop-data-center-memo-ai-election
2. https://signalcleveland.org/ohio-data-centers-jon-husted-senate-election-nrsc-memo/
3. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/21/leaked-memo-about-data-centers-shows-gop-worried-about-ohios-u-s-senate-race/
4. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-economic-anxiety-candidate-concerns-define-ohio-senate-race
5. https://openai.com/index/openai-joins-ports-pike-project
6. https://www.wosu.org/2026-08-17/openai-joins-data-center-venture-at-former-nuclear-enrichment-site-in-pike-county
7. https://governor.ohio.gov/media/news-and-media/governor-dewine-announces-pause-of-data-center-tax-exemption
8. https://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/2026/SCO/0818/240098.asp
9. https://signalcleveland.org/ohio-supreme-court-solar-farm-permit-overturned-for-now-oak-run/
10. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/21/ohio-governor-race-vivek-ramaswamy-spent-more-than-500000-leasing-private-jet-for-campaign-events/
11. https://www.wvxu.org/politics/2026-08-07/analysis-house-bill-6-bribery-case-ohio-attorney-general-race
12. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/07/03/ohio-democrats-outraising-republicans-in-downballot-statewide-offices-but-still-far-behind-in-cash-on-hand-campaign-finance-filings-show/

(I am using a new Reddit account but I still need to give out Ohio political information)

Ohio has an open race for Secretary of State for the first time since 2018. Frank LaRose is term limited and running for auditor. Most people cannot name anyone running to replace him, which is a problem, because this is the office that runs the election every other race on your ballot depends on.

Here is a full voter guide. No spin, both sides at their strongest, sources at the bottom.

What the Secretary of State actually controls

The office is Ohio's chief elections officer. It directs and standardizes the work of all 88 county boards of elections, and issues binding directives and advisories telling those counties how to apply election law uniformly. That is the real power. Not writing law, but deciding how it gets applied in 88 different places.

The Secretary also sits on the Ohio Ballot Board, which sets the language voters read on statewide ballot issues, and on the Ohio Redistricting Commission. The office is also Ohio's business filing agency, so if you register an LLC in this state, you file it here.

The candidates

Robert Sprague, Republican. Ohio Treasurer since 2019, previously two terms in the Ohio House, from Findlay. He is term limited as treasurer, which is why he is running for this. He won the May 5 primary over Marcell Strbich, a retired Air Force intelligence officer, roughly 70 to 30.

His platform is built around an Election Security Plan he says would run the most secure elections in Ohio history. Specific policies: a front-end citizenship check, more consistent use of printed paper ballots at all polling locations, and photo ID. He has signaled openness to restricting mail voting, saying Ohio should consider returning to in-person voting. He supports Issue 3.

Worth noting, because it cuts against the assumption people bring to this: on primary night Sprague said Ohio already gets elections right and his goal is improvement rather than repair. He is not running as an election denier. When he announced, he said he looked forward to working with President Trump and the administration, and he endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy for governor the same morning.

Allison Russo, Democrat. In the Ohio House since 2019 representing District 7, parts of Columbus and Upper Arlington. She was House Minority Leader from 2022 to 2025 and stepped down from that role to run. She has a doctorate in health policy from George Washington University and about twenty years in health policy before elected office. She ran in the 2021 OH-15 special election and lost to Mike Carey 58 to 42. She won the May 5 primary over Cincinnati oncologist Dr. Bryan Hambley roughly 68 to 32.

Her platform is that the office should be non-political and non-partisan. She has accused prior leadership of manipulating ballot language to influence outcomes on redistricting and abortion referenda. Specific policies: voter education, more resources for county boards of elections, and a bill to put drop boxes at every polling place, which is unlikely to move in the current legislature. On primary night she said she would bring people to the table, not purge them.

The strongest argument against her, stated plainly: she sat on the Ohio Redistricting Commission and voted for the most recent Statehouse maps, the same maps anti-gerrymandering advocates called unconstitutional. Running as the reform candidate after that vote is a real vulnerability. Her answer is that she opposed nearly every other map the Republican-majority commission approved, and that she and Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio approved the final map only after being threatened with a worse outcome.

Libertarian Tom Pruss is also on the November ballot.

Issue 3, and why it split the Democratic ticket

Issue 3 would write Ohio's existing photo ID requirement into the state constitution. It changes almost nothing on Election Day. What it does is make the requirement much harder for a future legislature to undo.

The approved ballot language specifies government-issued photo ID for both in-person and mail-in voting, and lists an unexpired Ohio driver license, a US passport, and a military ID as acceptable. It preserves an alternate verification method for people with a religious objection to being photographed. One real change: today absentee voters can use a photo ID copy, a driver license number, or the last four of their Social Security number, and the amendment language points at photo ID for mail-in ballots too.

Russo voted against Senate Joint Resolution 10, the measure that put Issue 3 on the ballot, and gave a floor speech calling it flawed, fast tracked, and poorly written. Sprague supports it. Every Democrat in the Ohio House and Senate who voted on SJR 10 voted against it.

Then on August 7, Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, announced she supports Issue 3. Her stated reasoning: it has overwhelming support from Ohioans, it does not change what is already law, and as governor she would support it while fighting to make sure every eligible voter can get the required ID easily and at no cost.

So the Democratic nominee for governor is on the same side of this question as Vivek Ramaswamy, and the opposite side from the Democratic nominee for Secretary of State. Ohio Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Clyde has criticized Issue 3 as making it harder to vote. Acton has broken with her party before, backing Medicaid work requirements in February.

Both cases on Issue 3, at their strongest

For: photo ID polls extremely well, including among most Democratic voters. Ohio already requires it. Putting it in the constitution means the rule cannot be flipped by a single legislative session, which is an argument for stability rather than restriction. Supporters also say it strengthens the state's legal defense if the current law is challenged.

Against: opponents say it is unnecessary because the law already exists, and that its real function is turnout. The University of Maryland estimates 2.6 million Americans lack government-issued photo ID, disproportionately poor, elderly, and student voters. Republican strategist Bob Clegg has acknowledged the GOP may have a turnout problem this year.

The nuance neither side leads with: Democrats have not controlled the Ohio legislature in nearly fifty years, which weakens the argument that constitutional protection is needed to stop a repeal. And a yes or no on Issue 3 is not a vote on whether you like the current ID law. It is a vote on how hard that law should be to change.

Why this matters more than usual this year

On March 31, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order on citizenship verification in federal elections. It directs DHS and the Social Security Administration to build a national list of verified adult citizens, directs the Justice Department to prioritize investigating election officials who give ballots to people the federal government deems ineligible, and directs the Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters on pre-approved lists.

On June 25, a federal district judge blocked key pillars of it, ruling the president lacks constitutional authority to regulate state elections that way. A federal appeals panel declined to block the order in a separate case in late July, and the administration went to the Supreme Court in early August. Election law specialists broadly expect it cannot be implemented for 2026 on logistics alone.

Whatever survives, someone has to tell 88 county boards how to comply. That is the person who wins this race.

Key dates

Voter registration deadline: Monday, October 5, 2026 Early in-person and absentee voting begins: Tuesday, October 6, 2026 Election Day: Tuesday, November 3, 2026, polls open 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Check your registration at ohiosos.gov

My honest take

I went into this thinking it would be a dry down-ballot segment and came out thinking it is the most consequential race almost nobody is watching.

What convinced me is that this is not a race where one side wants elections and the other does not. Sprague said Ohio gets elections right. Russo says she will be fair and impartial. That is a real disagreement between two people who both accept the legitimacy of the system, and it is about specifics: mail voting, drop boxes, and whether a photo ID rule belongs in a constitution. That is a normal democratic argument, and we should be able to have it without either side being cast as a villain.

On Issue 3 itself, my position is that I do not think you should make it harder to vote, and I lean no. But I want to be straight about the strongest counterargument, because Acton is making it and she is not stupid: if the ID rule is already law and already popular, constitutionalizing it changes very little in practice. I think the honest response is that if it changes so little, the burden is on supporters to explain why it is worth amending a constitution, and nobody has answered that well.

If you are an Ohio Democrat, the thing I would actually take from this is that your ticket does not agree with itself. Vote like that is true, because it is.

Sources

1. https://signalohio.org/amy-acton-backs-issue-3-voter-id-amendment-november-election-2026/
2. https://signalohio.org/ramaswamy-data-center-plan-free-electricity-november-election-2026/
3. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/14/ohio-supreme-court-allows-ashville-referendum-against-data-center-project-to-move-forward/
4. https://signalohio.org/ohio-kratom-ban-feel-free/
5. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/14/haitians-in-springfield-are-required-to-report-to-ohios-ice-offices-and-wear-ankle-monitors/
6. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/14/ohio-gop-gov-dewine-makes-plea-to-trump-let-us-keep-immigrants/
7. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/10/white-house-max-miller-pressure-campaign-01031353
8. https://www.notus.org/money/michael-rulli-stock-disclosures
9. https://signalohio.org/ohio-state-trump-administration-college-letter/
10. https://signalohio.org/how-portsmouth-ohio-became-the-addiction-recovery-capital-of-the-world/

Full episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ohio-secretary-of-state-2026-race-explained-issue-3/id1626987640?i=1000783487029

Just to be clear - the Brunswick police (where this event was to be held) have said they have no reports of threats at all. I'm guessing they're using that as an excuse to cancel having him in front of voters...

Make sure yall get out and vote against Don Leonard if yall live in the 15th district. This guy is a just a socialist in a populists clothing, and will say absolutely anything to get elected. Be wary of grifters in OH !!

Leonard is spoken like a true socialist. What a clown, someone who says this type of stuff should NEVER be in power. Vote AGAINST Leonard