They Sent All Your Voter Data

Top of Mind

Frank LaRose Just Sent 8 Million Ohioans’ Voter Data to the DOJ, Because Apparently That Felt Like a Great Idea

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has now handed the U.S. Department of Justice a copy of the state’s voter registration database, meaning the personal information tied to nearly 8 million Ohio voters is no longer just sitting in Columbus. According to reporting and public statements, the data shared included names, addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license or state ID numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Because when people register to vote, they naturally assume that information might someday get gift-wrapped and shipped off to Washington in the name of “election integrity.”

LaRose says Ohio was simply complying with a federal request as the Trump administration pushes states to turn over detailed voter records. That broader effort has already sparked alarm across the country, and not just from the usual partisan corners. Federal judges in California, Michigan, and Oregon have all recently rejected similar DOJ attempts to force states to hand over unredacted voter data, with courts questioning both the legal basis for the requests and the privacy risks involved. One federal judge warned that centralizing this kind of information could chill voter registration altogether, which feels like the sort of thing you might want to think about before uploading half the state’s personal data into the national bloodstream.

Critics in Ohio are calling the move exactly what it looks like: reckless. State Rep. Allison Russo said Ohioans deserve confidence that the private information they provide to participate in democracy will actually stay protected. That confidence is, at best, wobbling. And it is not hard to see why. If you told the average voter that signing up to cast a ballot might also mean their identifying data gets handed to a federal administration openly obsessed with voter fraud mythology and citizenship crackdowns, they might reasonably decide democracy sounds like too much paperwork and not enough privacy.

The official defense is that the DOJ promised to use the records only for legitimate governmental purposes and that data protections are in place. Wonderful. We are apparently doing government now on the honor system. This is the same federal push that has raised concerns in multiple states that voter data could be repurposed for immigration enforcement or other political fishing expeditions. Ohio, meanwhile, did not wait to be dragged into court. We just opened the door and offered the whole file cabinet.

And that is really the part worth sitting with. Voting is supposed to be one of the most basic acts of citizenship in a democracy. It should not come with the creeping suspicion that your personal information is being passed around like a legislative casserole. Ohio likes to brag that it is the “gold standard” of election administration. But if the gold standard now means handing over sensitive voter data because the DOJ asked nicely, then maybe the bar is not gold. Maybe it is just lying on the floor. 

Scarlet Letter Trivia

Question: Which city smokes the most weed in Ohio?

A. Columbus
B. Cleveland
C. Cincinati
D. Akron

Districts

Columbus spent years congratulating itself for finally creating council districts, only to end up with a system where the people in a district can still get outvoted by people who do not live there. Which is how District 7 voters chose Jesse Vogel, and Columbus as a whole chose Tiara Ross instead. If that sounds less like representation and more like a group project designed by committee, you are not alone. That outcome has now helped spark two separate efforts to change how City Council elections work before voters head back to the ballot in November.

Both proposals go after the same basic problem: Columbus calls these “districts,” but under the current system, every voter in the city gets a say in every district race. So the Hilltop can help pick Downtown’s representative, Downtown can help pick Linden’s, and everyone gets to pretend this is normal. One proposal from the coalition Our City Our Say would keep the current map for now and simply move Columbus to a true ward-style system where only residents of each district vote for their own council member. A separate proposal led by Jonathan Beard would do that too, but it would also redraw the map entirely, arguing the current lines undercut Black political power and fail to create enough majority-minority districts.

And that is where this stops being a simple good-government cleanup and turns into a very Columbus fight. On one side is the argument that the most obvious fix is the clean one: let each district choose its own representative and worry about redistricting after the 2030 census. On the other is the argument that if the map itself is flawed, then locking it in for four more years just preserves a different kind of dysfunction, especially for Black Columbus. In other words, Columbus may be on the verge of having two ballot campaigns built around the same basic message: this system is broken, we just disagree on whether to fix the engine first or the steering.

What makes this especially rich is that the current setup is only a few years old. Voters approved the city-backed hybrid system in 2018, it went into effect in 2023, and already people are trying to rip it back open because reality had the nerve to test the theory. Turns out residents do not love being told they have district representation when their district’s preferred candidate can still lose to the larger city machine. A shocking development, apparently, for anyone who has ever met a voter.

At the heart of this is a very basic question Columbus has not fully answered: what are districts actually for? If they are just branding, a nice way to make City Council look more neighborhood-friendly while keeping citywide power dynamics intact, then the current system is working exactly as designed. But if districts are supposed to mean local accountability, actual neighborhood representation, and council members who answer first to the people they live among, then this whole thing has been a civic costume from the start. November may give voters the chance to decide whether they want real districts, new districts, or just another round of Columbus making democracy more complicated than it needs to be. 

Ohio Said Yes to Weed. Now It’s Getting Weird About the Drinks.

Just when Ohio finally figured out how to let adults buy weed without acting like the sky was falling, the state has found a new hobby: going to war with THC seltzers. Two Cincinnati breweries, Fifty West and Urban Artifact, are now suing Ohio over Senate Bill 56, arguing that Gov. Mike DeWine used his veto pen to turn what lawmakers passed as a temporary sales window into an outright ban on hemp-derived THC drinks. In other words, the legislature handed the industry a runway, and the governor came in with scissors.

The dispute is not over whether Ohio wanted rules. It is over whether DeWine rewrote the law on the fly. According to the lawsuit filed in the Ohio Supreme Court, the enrolled version of SB 56 would have allowed hemp beverages, defined there as drinkable cannabinoid products, to be manufactured, distributed, and sold in Ohio through December 31, 2026, with products sold in-state capped at up to five milligrams of total THC per serving. The plaintiffs argue DeWine’s line-item veto erased that carveout and flipped the bill from regulation into prohibition.

And yes, this matters beyond a few trendy cans in brewery coolers. Starting March 20, 2026, hemp products with more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container can only be sold in licensed Ohio dispensaries, which means the corner market, bottle shop, brewery, and bar lose access to a product category that has been one of the few bright spots in an alcohol industry that has spent the last few years getting body-slammed by shifting consumer habits. Court filings say the ban threatens millions of dollars in losses, layoffs, and, in some cases, existential harm to the businesses involved.

DeWine’s side says this is just good policy. His administration has argued that allowing THC drinks to stay on shelves through most of 2026 would confuse consumers and clash with a broader crackdown on intoxicating hemp. Ohio Senate Republicans have echoed that line, saying the law is about oversight, accountability, and ending the sale of unregulated intoxicating hemp outside licensed dispensaries. Which is a very polished way of saying Ohio looked at a product people were buying legally and decided the only place you should get it now is somewhere with much harsher barriers to entry.

There is also a referendum effort brewing in the background, because apparently one court fight was not enough. Opponents of SB 56 have been gathering signatures to put the law on hold and let voters decide its fate in November. If that effort succeeds, the law gets paused. If it fails, the restrictions move forward in late March. So Ohio consumers may soon learn whether their THC drink is a regulated product, a political football, or just another thing the state managed to make dramatically more complicated than necessary.

And that is the real Ohio magic here. Voters approved legal marijuana in 2023. Businesses built products around the state’s hemp gray zone. Lawmakers wrote one thing. The governor trimmed it into something else. Now breweries are in court, advocates are chasing signatures, and consumers are left standing in the beverage aisle wondering why a state that finally entered the 21st century on cannabis is suddenly acting like a cherry-lime THC seltzer is a threat to civilization. 

A) Columbus: $4.7 million, Cincinnati: $2.5 million, Dayton: $1.2 million, Canton: $1.1 million, Akron: $877,000, Cleveland: $803,000