Data centers hit a stumbling block at the ballot box during the midterm elections on Tuesday after being featured in 41 measures across the country. Newsweek has mapped out 10 states where data centers appeared on local ballot measures. The issue of data centers has been widely contested as voters see both benefits and detriments to having them.
Development of sites can bring jobs, investment, new infrastructure and property tax revenue, but voters say they worry about water and electricity demand, large land footprints, noise from cooling systems and generators, and pressure on local grids and utilities. However, in all but one ballot measure on November 3, voters backed implementing some form of restriction or voted for bans on data centers. Ohio saw the vast majority of measures, accounting for 21 on the ballot.
The results mean in those local communities, getting a greenlight for a data center may prove more difficult. Voters in Conneaut, Defiance, Oregon and Sunbury voted for bans on data centers using more than 25 megawatts of power while Granville, Hubbard, Urbana, Upper Sandusky and Piqua approved outright bans. On the state level, Sherrod Brown, the newly elected Democratic senator for the state, made data centers a central pillar of his campaign, even going as far as to call his Republican opponent, Senator Jon Husted, “the face of data centers.” The issue extends beyond just the communities presented with local measures as according to a Bowling Green State University poll conducted last month, 71 percent of Ohioans reported to be in favor of a temporary ban on new data center construction.
Ohio currently has more than 200 operational data centers and is ranked fifth among U.S. states in number of data center projects. Illinois, which also has in excess of 200 operational data centers, had seven measures on the ballot. All of the vote tallies went against data center development.
Communities across Illinois either backed a moratorium on large-scale data centers, backed restrictions, rejected advisory questions supporting AI centers or rejected advisory measures to permit new facilities. Elsewhere, one community in California, banned data centers, one in Florida prohibited new facilities and one in Nevada rejected a proposal to allow data centers in the Eldorado Valley Transfer Area. Similarly, one community in New Jersey opposed an advisory question backing the centers and one measure passed in Wisconsin that will require any development costing more than $450 million to have voter approval.
Voters in Harwood, North Dakota, rejected extra review requirements for industrial developments, including data centers—effectively cutting an extra level of red tape on new developments. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Dave Siminoff.
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