Ion potentials are electricity… That’s the same thing as a voltage measurement: a difference in ion charge between two areas. Open the gate and the charge diffuses. That’s a wire.
Edit: poor phrasing with use of the word “wire”, I meant in a sense that it’s moving electricity, not that it’s a conventional solid wire with flowing electrons.
I’m not arguing that it’s the same as a conventional wire, but it is definitely still electricity. Communicating a signal by difference in ionic charge is, by definition, an electric signal, even if it’s the movement of ions in a pump instead of electrons across a solid wire.