Ohio voters are deciding 11 of the 21 local measures on Tuesday’s ballot that would ban or pause data centers, by our count of Ballotpedia’s list. On CNBC on Tuesday, Libby Cantrill, Pimco’s head of US public policy, said “Ohio is ground zero for this”.
Results are pending: polls were open when this piece was written. We will update it from official returns and AP race calls, and report no outcome before then.
Results update (02:43Z, 4 Nov). Official returns from Ohio’s county boards of elections, read between 02:22Z and 02:42Z, were incomplete for every measure we could open, and the pages for 19 of the 21 measures could not be read from our location.
Ban or pause (11): The official results pages for Conneaut, Defiance, Granville, Hubbard, Oregon, Pataskala, Piqua, Sunbury, Trenton, Upper Sandusky and Urbana could not be read at 02:22Z–02:35Z; not reported.
Rules or review (4): Returns for Grove City’s Issue 28, listed as a proposed charter amendment, were not yet complete on the Franklin County Board of Elections page at 02:42Z. Returns for Perry village’s Issue 16 were not yet complete on the Lake County Board of Elections page at 02:39Z. The Adams County page for Monroe and Sprigg townships could not be read at 02:22Z; not reported.
Allow or uphold (6): The official results pages for Ashville, Monroeville and the four Wilmington rezoning referendums could not be read at 02:22Z–02:26Z; not reported.
Ohio governor: The Ohio governor race is uncalled as of 02:43Z on 4 November, according to AP. Of the 11 ban measures, 0 were passing or passed, 0 failing or failed, and 11 incomplete or not read.
Results from AP race calls and official election offices; uncalled races are marked uncalled. This box will be updated.
Business Pill · Grid Cost Allocation
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on grid cost allocation: who pays for the infrastructure new data centers need. It explains the general idea only and does not discuss these ballot measures or companies.
The key insight: By our count of Ballotpedia’s list, Ohio holds 21 of the 41 local data center measures on the 3 November ballot and 11 of the 21 that would ban or pause data centers; Pimco’s Libby Cantrill told CNBC that state politics, not Washington, is where the risk to the buildout lies.
Cantrill spoke on CNBC’s Power Lunch segment posted on 3 November. The quotes below are from the segment’s captions. She said the main risk to data center growth sits with the states rather than Washington, and that “Ohio is ground zero for this, not only in terms of the gubernatorial race, where both candidates have actually advocated for a statewide moratorium”. She added: “But also there are many ballot measures that folks will actually be voting on in Ohio and across the country”.
She said Pimco has been telling clients to look past the idea that the issue is “just election year rhetoric”: “We would push back against that”. On the economics, she said the likely effect is not a halt: “you’re going to have more sand in the gears at both the local and at the state level. And that could just slow the growth”.
The candidates’ positions are as Cantrill described them; this piece does not assess them. The segment’s presenter said Pimco had singled out five governor’s races to watch for data centers: Ohio, Georgia, Nevada, Iowa and Texas.
Local data center measures on the 3 November 2026 ballot by what a yes vote would do, Ohio against the other nine states. Source: Ballotpedia, Data center-related ballot measures, 2026, read 2 November 2026; grouping is our reading of Ballotpedia’s descriptions. Our count. Results pending.
What Is on Ohio’s Ballots
Ballotpedia’s list, read on 2 November, has 21 data center-related measures in Ohio on 3 November, in 18 cities, villages and townships, by our count. That is more than half of the 41 local measures on the list, which span 10 states. By our grouping of Ballotpedia’s descriptions, 11 of the Ohio measures would prohibit data centers, four would add rules or a review, and six would allow data centers or uphold a decision already taken.
The official ballot text is set by each county board of elections. Butler County’s petition report lists Issue 17 in Trenton as a charter amendment, “Article IX, Section 9.06 “Prohibition of Construction of a Data Center””, filed on 4 September and certified on 9 September. Lake County’s issue list describes Perry Village’s Issue 16 as a proposed ordinance by petition on “the duties of the Village Fiscal Officer before signing Village agreements with a hyperscale data center involving tax” abatements, PILOT programs or any special tax designation.
Franklin County’s certified list describes Grove City’s Issue 28, a charter amendment by petition, as a “Community Consent Amendment” that “Creates a public referendum process for large developments”; the official summary does not use the words data center. Ballotpedia describes it as requiring voter approval for developments of at least 50 contiguous acres, more than 20 megawatts of peak electrical demand, or more than 500,000 gallons of water a day.
Four of the Ohio ban measures, in Conneaut, Defiance, Oregon and Sunbury, would prohibit data centers with a peak load or demand above 25 megawatts, according to Ballotpedia’s descriptions. In Wilmington, four referendums ask voters whether to uphold rezonings from rural residential to light industrial covering 65.29, 191.12, 119.373 and 170.11 acres; by our arithmetic, that is about 546 acres. In Ashville, a referendum asks whether to uphold a term summary for negotiations between the village and EdgeConneX on two data centers.
The Statewide Amendment Is Not on the Ballot
The 25-megawatt line also appears in a proposed statewide constitutional amendment that is not on this year’s ballot. The Ohio Capital Journal reported on 19 June that Conserve Ohio, the group behind it, said it would not submit signatures this year, ahead of the 1 July deadline, and was hoping to make the 2027 ballot; the amendment would prohibit building data centers with a peak load of more than 25 megawatts per month.
The certified issue lists from the Franklin and Lake county boards both include statewide Issue 3, a proposed constitutional amendment to require voters to present photo identification in order to vote.
The Ohio Capital Journal’s June report also said Ohio provided almost $1.57 billion in sales-tax exemptions on data center equipment and construction materials last year, according to the Ohio Department of Taxation, and that more than a dozen Ohio cities have enacted temporary moratoriums.
As we read the list, Ohio’s ballot covers both directions: 11 measures would prohibit data centers, while five referendums and one advisory question ask voters to back or uphold projects and rezonings.
As we read the official wording, the county ballot text does not always name data centers: Grove City’s Issue 28 is summarised by Franklin County as a referendum process for large developments.
As we read Cantrill’s remarks, she framed the stakes as pace rather than a stop, describing more friction at the local and state level that could slow growth.
Libby Cantrill, Pimco, on CNBC’s Power Lunch, 3 November (captions)
“Ohio is ground zero for this”
Three Implications
FOR READERS FOLLOWING THE VOTE Ohio has 21 data center measures on Tuesday’s ballot by our count; results should be read from official returns and AP race calls.
FOR READERS TRACKING DEVELOPERS Four of the Ohio ban measures name a 25-megawatt peak-load line, the same figure as the statewide amendment Conserve Ohio did not file for this year.
FOR READERS TRACKING TAX DEALS Perry Village’s Issue 16 concerns the Fiscal Officer’s duties before signing agreements with a hyperscale data center involving tax abatements, PILOT programs or special tax designations, Lake County’s issue list says.
The framework puts it this way: “Reading the map well means knowing where the constraint currently lives and where it is rotating to next.”
The framework uses that idea for the layers of the AI stack. As we read it, Tuesday’s Ohio ballot is one place to watch a constraint at the local level: town votes on whether, and on what terms, data centers get built. The framework does not discuss these measures.
No result is reported here: polls were open when this was written, and outcomes will come from official returns and AP race calls. The measure count and grouping are our reading of Ballotpedia’s list as read on 2 November. That list may change. we checked the official wording for three of the 21 Ohio measures against county board of elections documents, and the other 18 rest on Ballotpedia’s list; several county election sites could not be read on Tuesday.
Cantrill’s quotes come from CNBC’s video captions, and her description of the candidates’ positions has not been checked by us. This piece makes no forecast of any result.
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Ohio holds 21 of the 41 local data center measures on Tuesday’s ballot and 11 of the 21 that would ban or pause data centers, by our count of Ballotpedia’s list. Pimco’s Libby Cantrill called the state “ground zero” on CNBC. Results are pending.
A note on sourcing. Measure counts and descriptions come from Ballotpedia’s data center ballot measure list, read on 2 November; the Ohio counts and the grouping by what a yes vote would do are our own reading of that list. Official issue wording comes from the Butler, Franklin and Lake county boards of elections. Cantrill’s quotes are from CNBC’s captions of its 3 November Power Lunch segment.
This is an Election Day analysis written while polls were open: it reports no result and makes no forecast; results will come from official returns and AP race calls.
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.
