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US Voters Reject Data Centers in Nearly All Local Votes on November 3
Data center opponents won almost every local ballot measure on November 3, most of them in Ohio. The results are preliminary, and some of the votes are advisory.
Residents of US towns rejected data centers in nearly all of the local votes held on November 3, 2026. According to preliminary results reported by Route Fifty, supporters of such projects won only once. For the AI industry, which needs ever more computing power, it is a sign that local consent to build is becoming a risk in its own right.
Ohio at the center
According to Fortune, residents of 18 Ohio municipalities voted on 21 measures, more than half of the 41 such votes nationwide. In central Ohio, all five communities that held votes came down against data centers. Ohio already had 125 local moratoriums.
In Sunbury, a charter amendment banning facilities of 25 MW or more appears to have passed, with 100 percent of the unofficial vote counted. It targeted a possible hyperscale Amazon project, whose fate is unclear. In Trenton, about 80 percent of voters backed a ban. Organizers hope it will block a planned 18-building AWS site, though it probably won't affect a four-building campus that is already under construction.
In Wilmington, about 80 percent of voters rejected rezoning in four separate referendums that would have made room for a data center. In Perry, more than 87 percent backed a requirement that developers seeking tax breaks give the village financial guarantees. In Ashville, residents voted to block a campus that is already being built.
Other states
Route Fifty reports that data centers also lost in California, Illinois, Kansas, Maine and New Jersey. In Emporia, Kansas, more than 60 percent of voters backed a ban on "high impact data centers," meaning facilities with a peak electrical load above 10 megawatts or a daily water draw above 100,000 gallons. In Alhambra, California, preliminary results, with many votes still uncounted, point to a citywide ban.
The only exception is Harwood. The rejected amendment would have required an independent review and a public hearing before large industrial projects, including data centers, could be adopted. It would have applied only to future projects, not to the already approved Applied Digital campus.
Money and polls
Fortune notes that a Gallup poll in May found about 70 percent of Americans oppose building data centers in their area. In an ICAPP/SurveyUSA poll of 1,650 Ohio adults, 55 percent opposed data center construction in the state and 22 percent supported it.
According to DeSmog data cited by Fortune, the group Build American AI spent at least $2.54 million on television ads that ran in Ohio between September 7 and October 21. The ads cited $40 billion in investment and more than 95,000 jobs. The group is linked to the Leading the Future committee, funded by Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Greg Brockman, among others.
Voters across the country have emphatically rejected the push for AI data centers. - Mitch Jones, deputy director of Food & Water Action
Caveats and what's next
The results are preliminary, some votes have not yet been counted, and in Oregon, Ohio, no result was available at the time of publication. Route Fifty notes that some of the votes are advisory and do not bind local officials. Food & Water Action, quoted above, is a nonprofit that campaigns for clean water and food, so its assessment is the view of one side in the dispute.
More votes are expected in December in Arkansas and North Dakota, and in 2027 a statewide constitutional amendment banning new large data centers could go on the ballot in Ohio. Route Fifty says residents worry about the effect of data centers on water and power bills, and about a lack of transparency in deals between local governments and tech companies.
