Ohio Data Center Ban Advocates Race to Collect 413,000 Signatures by July 1 for November Ballot
May 9, 2026
Ohio Data Center Ban Advocates Race to Collect 413,000 Signatures by July 1 for November Ballot
A group of activists in southern Ohio is pushing forward with a proposed constitutional amendment to ban large data centers, despite a tight deadline to gather more than 413,000 signatures from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by July 1. If successful, the measure would appear on the November ballot and prohibit the construction of data centers with a peak load exceeding 25 megawatts per month.
Austin Baurichter, a Brown County resident and a lead petitioner, expressed confidence in the campaign’s ability to meet the requirement. “I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t think it was a doable task,” he said. The Ohio Ballot Board approved the petition for signature collection about a month ago, giving advocates a narrow window to mobilize support. Nikki Gerber, an Adams County resident also involved in the effort, echoed that sentiment: “I feel completely confident that we’re going to get enough signatures.” The group is relying entirely on volunteers to collect signatures, a deliberate strategy to broaden accessibility. “That was an intentional choice to make it widely accessible, because, in our opinion, that was the only way that we can get these signatures in the time that we need,” Baurichter explained. The campaign has not yet tallied its current count but expects to have a clearer picture in the coming weeks.
Ohio is home to approximately 200 data centers, ranking fifth-highest among U.S. states, with the majority concentrated in central Ohio. According to the Data Center Map, Cincinnati hosts 26 facilities and Cleveland has 23. The rapid expansion of data centers has sparked local resistance, with more than a dozen Ohio cities enacting temporary moratoriums on new developments. “The push and the urgency to build data centers are coming from a national level, but much of the decision making on data centers take place locally, and the impacts are also felt locally,” said Kate Stoll, project director at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues. Baurichter noted that grassroots opposition was already forming in many communities. “There exist all these communities already that have been resisting these data centers and being concerned about it,” he said. “So in some sense, the grassroots network that sprung up was already in existence because of how many of these data centers were already springing up.”
The environmental and energy implications of data centers have become a central concern. According to the Office of Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, a large data center can consume as much electricity as 100,000 homes. Data centers accounted for 4% of all U.S. electricity consumption in 2023, a figure projected to rise to 9% by 2030. In Virginia, where data center density is high, electricity prices have surged by up to 267% in recent years, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Water usage is another critical issue: a large data center can require up to five million gallons of water per day for cooling, much of which comes from municipal supplies. “A lot of the water used to cool data centers comes from municipal taps,” Stoll said.
In response to growing concerns, the Ohio House unanimously passed a bill to create a new data center study commission, which now awaits consideration by the Ohio Senate. At the national level, lawmakers in at least 11 states—including Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin—have introduced legislation to temporarily ban data centers, reflecting a broader trend of regulatory scrutiny over the industry’s rapid expansion.
Source: 10tv
