Ohio voters banned datacenters town by town — Ashville said no by 82%

Voters in at least 14 Ohio municipalities passed bans or new restrictions on data centers on November 3, with 10 towns passing outright bans on construction. Hubbard, Sunbury, Pataskala, Urbana, Defiance, Upper Sandusky, Piqua, Granville, Conneaut and Trenton all voted to bar the facilities, most by wide margins.

The sharpest rebuke came in Ashville, where almost 82 percent voted to reverse the village council's agreement with developer EdgeConneX for two data centers and an on-site gas plant on 195 acres. In Trenton, almost 80 percent passed Issue 17, banning data centers that use more than 25 megawatts of electricity.

The results give the voter backlash its first binding verdicts: Ohio put more data-center measures on the ballot than any other state, and the measures decided so far all went against the industry. An Amazon Web Services project planned just outside Trenton now faces an uncertain path, with a neighboring township already moving to ban data centers in its own zoning.