Marijuana vote: See the most pro-pot areas in Franklin County

Bill Bush, Columbus Dispatch
Downtown Columbus is visible from Summit Street in the Italian Village neighborhood. In Columbus Ward 12, which stretches north from the Greater Columbus Convention Center east of High Street to East 11th Avenue, over 91%, of voters supported legalized marijuana, the highest percentage of any Franklin County ward.
Downtown Columbus is visible from Summit Street in the Italian Village neighborhood. In Columbus Ward 12, which stretches north from the Greater Columbus Convention Center east of High Street to East 11th Avenue, over 91%, of voters supported legalized marijuana, the highest percentage of any Franklin County ward.

Marijuana becomes legal Thursday in Ohio, and apparently one Columbus neighborhood couldn't be happier — even more so than the rest of Franklin County.

In Columbus Ward 12, which stretches north from the Greater Columbus Convention Center east of High Street to East 11th Avenue, pretty darn near everybody voted to make pot legal in last month's election — over 91%, the highest percentage of any Franklin County ward, data shows.

"Yeah, that makes sense," said Jack Mairs, 24, an Ohio State University graduate student studying law who lives in the neighborhood, a mix of dense new four- and five-story brick apartment buildings near high street that many students call home. Further east the apartment blocks turn to mostly single-family homes and duplexes.

The support in the area was roughly 23 percentage points above the total yes vote in Franklin County of 68%. Only 248 people out of almost 3,000 voting from the ward, which also takes in Italian Village, voted no. This single ward netted the yes side over 2,400 votes.

"I think a lot of people now, especially with the way the past elections have been going, I think people are lot more active, or wanting to be more active. And I think especially for something — marijuana specifically — is something that is a big issue among my generation," Mairs said.

Across Franklin County, Issue 2 was popular — only two wards out of 160 voted no, and one barely so, by less than 2 percentage points.

Computer mapping showed the 21 precincts, the building-block zones that are pieced together typically in groups of four to six to form a ward, that voted against legalized marijuana were generally in the Short North, and East and South sides of Columbus. Several suburban areas, however, came out for Issue 2 in above average strength, including: Grandview (77%); Clinton Township (76%); Valleyview and Bexley (74%); Whitehall and Sharon Township (70%).

The only two wards in the county where Issue 2 didn't win were in Jackson Township, the unincorporated areas around Grove City (48.5%); and Columbus Ward 56, largely consisting of sparsely populated precincts up Westerville Road between Mock and Morse roads (45.8%). In one precinct in Ward 56 less than one in four voters backed making pot legal.

Sam Sabo, an employee at Hippie Hut, prices Water pipes during his shift. He said he wasn't surprised residents who lived near the shop on the corner of High Street and West 10th Avenue overwhelmingly supported legalized marijuana.
Sam Sabo, an employee at Hippie Hut, prices Water pipes during his shift. He said he wasn't surprised residents who lived near the shop on the corner of High Street and West 10th Avenue overwhelmingly supported legalized marijuana.

Meanwhile, at the Hippie Hut Smoke Shop at the corner of High Street and West 10th Avenue — right across High Street from the county's most pro-pot Ward 12, where more than nine in ten voters supported Issue 2 — workers Jason Cindia, 22, and Sam Sabo, 21, both students at Ohio State, had a hunch last week that business for their "head shop products" (those types of pipes typically associated with smoking marijuana, but which can also be used to smoke tobacco) might be about to pick up.

"All of these waterpipes on our shelves aren't going to be paraphernalia for marijuana or cannabis anymore with the new law," Sabo said. "Right now, they're all tobacco-use only. Anything else is buyer's discretion."

The Hippie Hut at 10th Avenue and High Street near The Ohio State University campus.
The Hippie Hut at 10th Avenue and High Street near The Ohio State University campus.

Cindia didn't vote in November — and caught a lot of complaints from his friends, who were fired up to get out the vote. "Every single person that I told that was like 'What the hell? Why didn't you go vote?' I was under the thought that almost damn near the whole eligible (student) population did vote," Cindia said. "They had a big turnout."

Actually, the data doesn't back that up. In Ward 12, about 42% of registered voters cast a ballot. The top 11 wards by turnout were in Worthington, Riverlea, Clintonville, Bexley, Westerville, and Upper Arlington. Voter turnout there was between 70% and 77%, and even though voters were more divided than in Ward 12, the large turnout netted the yes side more than 11,000 votes.

If Ward 12 could have mustered 77% turnout, it may have netted the yes side another 2,000 votes alone, based on the actual vote breakdown.

And a higher yes vote may have given GOP state lawmakers pause about undoing Issue 2, whose changes are not written into the state constitution like the Issue 1 abortion protections, but rather the more easily amended Revised Code.

"It's definitely concerning to me, because it's like why did we even vote at that point," Mairs said of possibility of Issue 2 being reversed by lawmakers. "I think a lot of things the Statehouse has been saying has been kind of been like just completely ignoring the will - the voting - of the people."

wbush@gannett.com

@ReporterBush

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Marijuana vote: See the most pro-pot areas in Franklin County

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