Fortune reported at 06:35Z on 4 November that Ohio residents in 18 municipalities voted on 21 data center ballot measures on Tuesday, with “at least 14 municipalities passing bans or other restrictions on data centers”. The figures are unofficial county counts.
By our count of the Cincinnati Enquirer’s lists, limits passed on 17 of the 21 measures. The four towns without a reported result are Oregon, Monroe, Sprigg and Monroeville.
Fortune put the votes next to “125 local data center moratoriums already in place in Ohio”. That figure links to an Ohio Capital Journal count of temporary pauses from 18 September, headlined “over 125 active moratoriums”; its text says “At least 138 Ohio municipalities and townships have active moratoriums on data centers as of Sept. 17”.
Business Pill · Grid Cost Allocation
A short Business Engineer explainer on how grid costs are allocated between customers. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss the elections or these ballot measures.
The key insight: By our count of the Cincinnati Enquirer’s lists, Ohio voters passed data center limits on 17 of 21 measures in 14 of 18 municipalities, on unofficial counts; the local reports also overturn the five Ohio exceptions in our earlier national count, which now reads 35 of 35 by our arithmetic.
The Enquirer reported that 11 of the 18 municipalities voted on outright bans and seven on “measures that added new regulations or oversight”. It listed 10 that passed bans: Hubbard, Sunbury, Pataskala, Urbana, Defiance, Upper Sandusky, Piqua, Granville, Conneaut and Trenton. Oregon also voted on a ban, but the Lucas County board was not reporting results as of midnight.
Four more passed other restrictions, the Enquirer reported. In Ashville, almost 82% voted to reverse the village council’s agreement with EdgeConneX. In Grove City, 55% approved a charter amendment requiring a public vote on large developments, including data centers using more than 20 megawatts. In Perry, over 87% backed financial guarantees from developers seeking tax incentives.
In Wilmington, voters rejected four rezoning ordinances covering nearly 546 acres near a proposed Amazon Web Services campus, the Wilmington News Journal reported, citing unofficial Clinton County Board of Elections results. Each ordinance drew about 80% No; the first, O-26-04, drew 739 Yes and 2,885 No.
In Trenton, Fortune reported, a ban passed 80% to 20%. In Granville, NBC4 reported 2,015 votes For and 429 Against, or 82.45%, with 100% of the unofficial vote counted.
Ohio’s 21 data center ballot measures on 3 November, one dot each, grouped by our reading of the Cincinnati Enquirer’s lists and coloured by the outcome reported by local outlets citing county boards. All counts are unofficial and not certified. Monroeville shows a Ballotpedia count only; the Enquirer said its result was not yet available.
A Correction to Our Count
Our earlier piece counted 30 of 35 measures nationally leaning toward limits, from Ballotpedia’s posted figures at 06:49Z. It named five exceptions, all in Ohio: Granville and the four Wilmington rezonings. The local reports above contradict all five. Ballotpedia showed Granville at 205 Yes and 938 No, and about 80% in the Yes column for each Wilmington rezoning.
With those five rows replaced by the local figures, all 35 measures with counts lean toward limits, by our arithmetic. We have not re-checked the other 30 against county boards. That piece now carries a dated correction.
The Money and the Statewide Races
Fortune reported that a DeSmog investigation found Build American AI spent at least $2.54 million on television ads that ran in Ohio between 7 September and 21 October. It said the group is linked with Leading the Future, a super PAC funded by Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Greg Brockman, and that the ads did not endorse any candidates.
In the Senate race, Fortune reported, Sherrod Brown argued for eliminating tax breaks for data center companies, while Jon Husted supported the tax breaks. Fortune also cited a SurveyUSA poll for Ohio Northern University’s ICAPP, of 1,650 Ohio adults published in October: 55% opposed data center construction in the state and 22% supported it.
Go deeper: how data center politics works across local ballots, candidates’ terms and federal pledges, starting with what the 41 local ballot measures asked voters to do. How Data Center Politics Works, in 41 Local Ballot Votes.
As we read the Ohio returns, the votes add a local layer on top of the moratoriums already in place: Fortune cited 125, and the Ohio Capital Journal’s text counts at least 138 municipalities and townships as of 17 September.
As we read the Wilmington and Ashville results, referendums on deals already approved by councils went the same way as the citizen bans, with roughly 80% voting against in each.
Keith Durkin, director of Ohio Northern University’s ICAPP, to Fortune
“With over 100 Ohio townships adopting moratoria or restrictions, strong voter turnout against expansion would signal to statehouses nationwide that ratepayer protections, transparency, and grid safeguards should dominate policy agendas”
Three Implications
FOR DATA CENTER DEVELOPERS Limits passed on 17 of 21 Ohio measures, by our count of the Enquirer’s lists, including four Wilmington rezonings near a proposed AWS campus.
FOR SITE SELECTION Fortune tied the votes to 125 local moratoriums; the Ohio Capital Journal’s text counts at least 138 as of 17 September.
FOR HOW THE COUNT IS READ All figures are unofficial county counts as reported; results for Oregon, Monroe, Sprigg and Monroeville were not yet available.
The framework puts it this way: “Companies that solve the power equation will dominate the AI era; those that don’t will watch their chips sit idle.”
As we read it, Ohio’s votes add local consent to that equation alongside grid capacity: limits passed in 14 of 18 towns voting, on unofficial counts. The framework does not discuss the 2026 elections or ballot measures.
Every vote figure here is unofficial. Ohio county board websites returned an access error to our fetch, so the counts are as reported by Fortune, the Enquirer, NBC4 and the Wilmington News Journal citing the boards. Local measures are counted by local election offices, not called by AP.
Results for Oregon, Monroe, Sprigg and Monroeville were not yet available, the Enquirer reported; Ballotpedia shows Monroeville at 88% No on an advisory measure to allow data centers. The moratorium count is the Ohio Capital Journal’s, from local records and news reports as of 17 September. We make no forecast on any project.
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Fortune reported that at least 14 of the 18 Ohio municipalities voting on data centers passed bans or other restrictions. By our count of the Enquirer’s lists, that is 17 of 21 measures, with four towns still unreported. The local reports also overturn the five Ohio exceptions in our earlier count: Granville passed its ban and Wilmington rejected all four rezonings.
A note on sourcing. Ohio vote counts are unofficial county figures as reported by Fortune, the Cincinnati Enquirer, NBC4, The Reporting Project and the Wilmington News Journal on 3-4 November 2026; none are certified. Groupings and totals are our arithmetic. Fortune was read in full.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
