Voters back nearly all anti-data center proposals
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Voters in 10 states decided 41 data center ballot measures and rejected development in all but one.
The backlash is now reshaping local and state races, with Ohio and Texas incumbents losing.
Background
Data centers are large facilities that house the computing hardware powering AI platforms, and tech companies have been building them aggressively across the U.S. Residents in both Republican and Democratic cities have pushed back over energy costs, pollution, water use, noise and the loss of farmland and open space. A UMass Amherst poll published earlier this year found only 11% of Americans would support an AI data center in their community. The November 3 votes were the largest wave of data center ballot measures on record.
How it unfolded
- Mar 2026City council members in Monterey Park, California unanimously voted to put a data center ban before voters and extend an existing moratorium.
- Jun 2026Monterey Park residents voted to permanently ban data centers, becoming the first U.S. city to do so.
- Aug 2026OpenAI announced it secured 8 gigawatts of computing capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio, the largest planned AI data center campus in the world.
- Nov 3, 2026Voters in 10 states decided 41 local data center ballot measures, the largest wave of such votes on record; they sided against data centers in all but one, a charter amendment in Harwood, North Dakota.
- Nov 3, 2026Ohio accounted for 21 of the proposals; voters went against data center development in all 19 counted, passing 11 bans and rejecting all four Wilmington rezonings 80 to 20.
- Nov 3, 2026Illinois' 7 advisory measures all went against data centers, with support for restrictions ranging from 74 to 88 percent across Madison County townships, Joliet Township, Bloomington and Morgan County.
- Nov 3, 2026In down-ballot races, Democrat Sherrod Brown ousted Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio after casting him as "the face of data centers," and Gina Hinojosa unseated Texas Gov. Greg Abbott after blaming him for rapid data center buildout.
- Nov 4, 2026By Wednesday morning, 38 of the 41 measures had been called: voters chose to limit data center development in 37 and to allow or support it in one, with three not yet reported.
Key terms
- ballot measures
- A question or proposal placed on an election ballot for voters to approve or reject directly.
- rezonings
- A planning method where local government divides land into zones with rules governing permitted uses and building form.
Source: Wikipedia
Who’s saying what
- Party
- Texas Democratic representative Greg Casar said the revolt against data centers was one of the top issues of the 2026 election and called it "just the early tremor of a much bigger AI earthquake upending American politics."
- Support
- Nick Owens, an attorney with the campaign group Conserve Ohio, said it was "one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, people coming together across communities, putting partisan differences aside and uniting."
- Official
- Ohio governor-elect Amy Acton, a Democrat, supports a "conditional moratorium" on data centers so they cover 100% of utility costs and "exclusively build with union labor."
- Caution
- An advocate identified as Whitesides said Big Tech will keep trying to "buy and bully local officials" but hoped the results signal that local leaders can resist with community backing.
Still unverified
Three of the 41 November 3 measures had not been reported as of Wednesday morning, and roughly a dozen similar measures were on ballots in communities where vote totals had not yet been announced, so final counts were expected to shift.