Why the Ohio Secretary of State Race Should Be on Every Ohioan's Radar Before May 5

Subtitle: A conversation with Dr. Bryan Hambley on gerrymandering, ballot language, voter rolls, and what it actually takes to fix a democracy.

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When most people think about the offices that matter in a midterm election, they think governor, they think Senate, they think Congress. The Secretary of State almost never makes the list. That is a mistake, and it is one Ohio can no longer afford to make.

I recently sat down for a long-form conversation with Dr. Bryan Hambley on the Purple Political Breakdown podcast. Bryan is a practicing leukemia physician at UC Health in Cincinnati, and he is one of two Democrats running in the May 5, 2026 primary for Ohio Secretary of State. What struck me most in our conversation was not partisan talking points. It was his willingness to walk through, step by step, exactly what this office does, where it has been failing Ohioans, and how a different approach could change the actual lived experience of voting in this state.

The Three Jobs Most Ohioans Do Not Know About

The Secretary of State of Ohio does three main things. First, the officeholder sits on the Ohio Redistricting Commission and plays a central role in drawing the maps for Congress, the state Senate, and the state House. Second, the officeholder controls the language that appears on your ballot when you go to vote on constitutional amendments and ballot issues. Third, the officeholder sets the policies and procedures that county boards of elections use to run actual elections, from polling place allocation to early voting windows to voter roll maintenance.

If any one of those three jobs is done badly, the consequences ripple out into every other race on every other ballot. If all three are done badly at once, a state stops functioning as a representative democracy and starts functioning as a managed outcome.

The Lincoln Heights Case Study

One of the clearest illustrations Bryan offered came from Hamilton County. Lincoln Heights is a historically African-American community, more than 90 percent Black, sitting in the middle of Hamilton County. Under the current gerrymandered congressional map, Lincoln Heights was drawn out of the Cincinnati congressional district and into a district that primarily represents rural farming communities north and west of Dayton. The people in Lincoln Heights share almost no common economic or civic interests with that new district, and the district's representative has no natural incentive to prioritize their concerns. As Bryan put it, this was not about the politicians who lost. This was about the people in that community who lost.

Ohio's congressional map has been found unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court, which rejected earlier versions five separate times. The current congressional map, adopted by a simple majority vote of the Ohio Redistricting Commission without Democratic support, expires after four years and must be redrawn for the 2026 elections. What comes next depends in part on who is in the Secretary of State's office.

Ballot Language as a Weapon

In November 2024, Ohioans voted on Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that would have established an independent citizen-led redistricting commission. It failed. Polling from July 2024 had shown 60 percent of Ohioans, including roughly a third of Republicans, supporting the underlying idea. So what happened?

Bryan pointed to the ballot language itself, written by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, which took up roughly half of the page and was filled with run-on sentences and framing designed to make voters unsure what a yes vote meant. After the election, the Ohio Republican Party chair was quoted in a Fremont, Ohio newspaper saying, in a room he believed was closed to the press, that confusing Ohio voters had turned out to be a pretty good strategy. A local journalist happened to be there.

Bryan's position is simple. Ballot language should be written at the reading level of the average Ohioan, which is roughly sixth to seventh grade, and amendments should be explainable in three to five clearly worded sentences. Other states do this. It is not technically complicated. It is politically complicated.

Voter Rolls, the ERIC System, and a Request from the DOJ

In 2023, Ohio withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, a bipartisan multi-state compact that securely shared voter data between states. Before the withdrawal, LaRose himself had publicly called ERIC "one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have." After a coordinated misinformation campaign against ERIC from anti-democratic activists, nine Republican-led states, including Ohio, pulled out. Records later obtained through litigation showed that other officials in LaRose's own office privately disagreed with the decision. Bryan wants Ohio back in ERIC, and he wants the system expanded to all 50 states.

Separately, the current Secretary of State's office handed over the last four digits of every Ohio voter's Social Security number to the federal Department of Justice. Most Republican states and all Democratic states refused the request. Bryan said plainly that he would have refused as well.

Making Voting Easier, Not Harder

Bryan's principle is that no Ohioan should have to wait more than 20 minutes in line to vote or drive more than 20 minutes to drop off a ballot. He supports automatic voter registration at the BMV when you update your driver's license, same-day voter registration, and Election Day as a state holiday. He also pointed out something worth thinking about. You can check a box on your Ohio driver's license to donate your organs. You cannot check a box to register to vote.

Ranked Choice Voting, Home Rule, and a Recent Loss

On March 17, 2026, Governor Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 63, making Ohio the 19th state to ban ranked choice voting. The law also withholds state funding from any municipality that adopts it. Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, Cincinnati, and Stow had all been exploring ranked choice voting under their home rule authority. Bryan called the ban a mistake and said his party should have stood more firmly for local self-determination, even when it is not politically convenient. His broader position is that democracy reform is a long game. Let one community try something that works. Let its neighbors hear about it. Then let the conversation grow from there.

The Office, Not the Title

Maybe the line from our conversation that stuck with me most was this. "It is a job to do, not a title to get." Bryan is a practicing physician who intends to remain one. If elected, he intends to serve four years, or possibly eight if Ohio voters send him back, and then return to medicine. He is running in a race where several candidates, including his likely general election opponent Robert Sprague, are already term-limited out of their current statewide offices and simply hopping to the next one.

Ohio's May 5 primary will decide not only who runs in November, but what kind of Secretary of State's office Ohioans are actually debating for the general. Whichever candidate you support, in whichever primary you vote in, this is a race to pay attention to.

You can listen to the full conversation here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ending-gerrymandering-in-ohio-dr-bryan-hambley-on-the/id1626987640?i=1000763245485