Ohio's proposed data-center ban is now in Week Six of signature gathering, and the public still has no statewide count. The campaign has a certified proposal, a Ballot Board clearance, and a July 1 deadline. It does not have the one number that turns the story from a land-use argument into ballot math. [1]

The paper's Sunday brief on Week Five's missing statewide count said absence was the artifact. Monday makes it a pattern. Organizers need more than 413,000 valid signatures from at least 44 of Ohio's 88 counties to qualify for November. [2]

That threshold is the divergence. Mainstream coverage explains the proposal's energy and zoning consequences; local X asks whether a volunteer campaign is anywhere near the arithmetic. [1][2] Both questions matter. Only one decides whether voters ever see the amendment.

Week Six is therefore not about data centers in the abstract. It is about whether public debate can proceed while the campaign's progress remains uncounted. A petition drive may be populist in language. It is bureaucratic in execution. The next honest update is a number.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York