In primary contests for Ohio Secretary of State, debate features gerrymandering, election integrity

The May 5 primary will be important for Ohio voters who care about the administration of elections. In the race for the next Ohio Secretary of State, both Republican and Democratic voters have competitive primaries to decide to pick their candidates for the November general election.

All the candidates in the race say the office is in need of a strong leader who understands the importance of elections, and the need to support local boards of elections.

Where the candidates differ is in the priorities they would set from day one.

While Democrats are focused on battling against gerrymandering and outside pressure from the federal level to interfere in state-run elections, Republicans have their sights set on how ballot machines should be used on a local level, and improving the verification methods for voters.

Robert Sprague

Republican Robert Sprague, the current Ohio Treasurer, said “incremental improvements” to make sure Ohio’s system of elections is running smoothly would include a “front-end citizenship check” and more consistent use of the printed paper ballots that are used in many, but not all, ballot locations in the state.

He said the “perfect and immutable audit trail” created through the use of printed ballots would run alongside the photo ID requirement at the ballots and citizenship checks to make sure election fraud remains as statistically rare as the current secretary of state, Frank LaRose, says it is.

“We want to make sure that people that have moved out of our state, that no longer meet the residency requirements under the law, are no longer registered to vote in Ohio,” Sprague told the Capital Journal. “(That includes) people that are non-citizens, illegal immigrants, obviously people that have passed away.”

Sprague, who has the endorsement of the Ohio Republican Party, said he plans to apply the experience he’s gained from being the state treasurer since 2019, along with his previous private sector work as a consultant, to continue the work of the chief elections officer.

“The Secretary of State’s Office, and particularly the running of the election, is that keystone, that cornerstone of our republic, because it allows us as citizens, through the ballot box, not just to choose our representatives, but to preserve our rights under the constitution of the state of Ohio and the United States,” Sprague said.

While Sprague thinks Ohio does well with its election practices, he sees an old-school method of voting as a worthy consideration to improve state elections even more.

“I’d like to see us consider returning back to in-person voting,” Sprague said. “It worked great for those first 200 years.”

If elected the next secretary of state, Sprague said he would view himself “as more of an umpire than a player on the field,” and while he is a member of a Republican party that holds a strong majority in the legislature and nearly all other higher-level elected offices, he says he’s “not someone that tries to tip the scales one way or the other.”

“I’m proud to run on the Republican ticket, but I hope people judge me by my vision, and my proven leadership ability … and my plan for the future,” Sprague said.

Marcell Strbich

Running against Sprague in the May Republican primary, Marcell Strbich wants to take his 20-year military career and passion for system security to the office, with plans to increase voter verification prior to voting, and bring electronic voting systems farther than their “2005 security control standard.”

Strbich said he’s been critical of the elections process in Ohio for many years, questioning not just the use of electronic systems, but the efficiency of the process as a whole.

“I saw the conduct of the way certain elections were being conducted in my county that caused me to ask a lot of questions as to the process and the acceptability of the conduct,” Strbich said. “And I realized that there’s a lot of impropriety in the way that things work.”

Particularly, the retroactive way in which voters are verified doesn’t make sense to Strbich, who said the verification should start at a registration level, and absentee voters shouldn’t be exempt from proving their identity, just as in-person voters need to bring a photo ID to cast their ballots.

“That leaves circumstances or certain situations where we can not qualify a registrant or a record before they’re given access to regular ballots, and that has to be addressed by giving the board of elections capability and mandate to do certain verifications,” Strbich told the Capital Journal.

While he said he is against hand-counting all ballots in every county in the state, he has his hesitations about trusting electronic voting machines that “are lacking independent third-party assessment review.”

“I would promote the idea and move us to an implementation of pre-printed, hand-markable paper ballots, in part because our votes are recorded on electronic vote-casting or touch-screen systems, and QR codes and bar codes,” Strbich said.

Those codes are “software driven,” he said, therefore don’t allow the ability to “visually verify the vote.”

He did say he’d be open to a sort of pilot program of hand-counting ballots.

“What I’d be open to is working with a county that is rural, for example, that would like to see if they can execute that in some type of implementable way,” he said.

Strbich said he stands with the president on “election reforms,” and he’s heard from voters who are “generally apathetic,” seeing issues come up again and again despite years of election to change the landscape of elected officials.

He said the Ohio Ballot Board, which each secretary of state leads, should be creating language for voters that is easily understandable, to keep voters engaged and coming back to the ballot boxes.

“I think voters don’t like to feel like they’re going in there and somebody is doing legal Jedi mind tricks on them,” he said.

Allison Russo

Current Ohio House Rep. Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, wants to see a secretary of state who heads up the Ohio Ballot Board, and the office as a whole, in a “non-political and non-partisan” way, especially after what she saw as a “clear manipulation of the ballot language to influence election outcomes” in an unsuccessful redistricting reform amendment in 2024, and a successful reproductive rights amendment the year before.

“We need to take an approach that also focuses on how do we simplify this language so that we’re not creating longer lines at the voting booth, that we’re not creating confusion, and that we’re not introducing bias into the process,” Russo said.

Russo has been a member of the Ohio legislature since 2019, and stood as House minority leader from 2022 to 2025.

Having been a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission in her tenure as House minority leader, she had a front row seat for the process in which the redrawing of districts led to harsh criticism of the process, many court battles, and maps that were determined to be unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court multiple times.

She received criticism herself for being part of a unanimous vote to pass maps that anti-gerrymandering advocates said maintained or expanded the Republican foothold on the state in a way that didn’t follow constitutional redistricting rules.

She has defended her vote, saying she wanted to move the process to the ballot box, in hopes that the redistricting amendment would pass. It was defeated in the 2024 contest, leaving the commission in place.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose was also a member of the commission, and Russo said becoming the secretary of state herself would allow her to “use the bully pulpit” of the office not only to push for voter education and access in Ohio, but also to act as the “guardrail” between legislative or presidential overreach.

“We are now in a period where we see the president of the United States himself questioning the integrity of our elections, and sowing doubt in our election process, which I think is a very dangerous place to be as a democracy,” Russo said.

Pushing against “misinformation and disinformation” should mean educating voters on their rights, as well as getting local boards of elections the resources they need, according to Russo.

“When everyone doesn’t have a seat at the table, and they’re not participating, we’re not going to have government that is reflective of the needs of the people, or responsive to the needs of the people,” she said.

Bryan Hambley

Gerrymandering was the main driver bringing Bryan Hambley into the race. As a Cincinnati-based doctor who treats leukemia patients, he said he’s used to having to “check my policy at the door,” even when listening to patients’ financial struggles when their health care doesn’t cover all of their treatments.

“Gerrymandering is the upstream problem for better health care policy in Ohio,” Hambley said.

Hearing from patients, and now voters, on how health care struggles and other issues are impacted by their elected officials and the districts in which they vote led Hambley to believe the secretary of state should be leading the charge in defending against gerrymandering.

“Priority number one of our next secretary of state should be ending gerrymandering by re-running that constitutional amendment and using the secretary of state’s power over ballot language to win it,” Hambley said.

While the main vision Hambley has for the office includes pushing for fair districts and easily understandable ballot language, the doctor said he’s also taking a unique stand in campaigning that a part of the job he’s running for should be eliminated.

“I think that the most powerful part of my job as secretary of state should be removed from the office, and that is the power of the redistricting commission,” Hambley told the Capital Journal.

“I believe the redistricting commission should never meet again; it should be replaced by an independent redistricting commission.”

Even before potentially sitting in the secretary’s chair, Hambley said it’s important that he covers as many miles of the state as he can, especially as a Democrat in a state that has such a strong Republican presence of elected officials.

Democrats need to “go everywhere, and communicate with people on values as much as policy,” according to Hambley.

“Democrats have to work harder,” he said. “Too many times we have candidates that put their name on the ballot and expect to win, only to have the Republicans clean their clock in the general election.”

As he works with a policy advisory team on how they can run “a different kind of secretary of state’s office,” the main theme is a non-partisan attitude.

“We need civil servants more than we need political hacks in that office,” Hambley said. “And that’s not what we’ve seen over the last eight years.”

The Ohio Democratic Party has not endorsed in the primary race.

Tom Pruss

Tom Pruss did not respond to multiple interview requests from the Capital Journal.

The Toledo native, who is running as a Libertarian, has a career in the printing industry. He ran in 2024 to unseat Democratic U.S. House Rep. Marcy Kaptur, and has run previous campaigns to join the Toledo School Board and for Lucas County Clerk of Courts.

On his campaign website, Pruss states the secretary of state’s office “has been used as a gatekeeper for the two major parties,” and he pledges to “restore neutrality, integrity, and equal access to the ballot.”

Also on his campaign website, Pruss said he plans to “make election data easily accessible,” increase campaign finance reporting accountability, and ensure “secure voting systems.”

Ohio is holding its primary election on May 5, with the general election scheduled for Nov. 3.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.