Voters Have Spoken: It’s Time to Rethink How Data Centers Are Developed 

On November 3, data center development stopped being a zoning footnote and became a ballot question. In town after town, voters were asked some version of the same thing: Should data center development keep going the way it has? Their answer was a resounding no. 

That answer should surprise no one who has been paying attention during the past two years. Our recently released report, Developing a Data Center Policy, documents the scale of what communities are facing. Large data center campuses can cover 350 to more than 1,000 acres. A typical facility uses as much power as 10,000 to 25,000 homes. Evaporative cooling at a large site can draw five million gallons of water a day, roughly what a small city uses. 

Communities have been pushing back for some time. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, local opposition blocked or delayed 75 projects representing $130 billion in investment. Even though other projects have gone through as planned, the industry has generally not earned what researchers call a social license to operate in many communities. The midterm elections made that impossible to ignore. 

Data Centers Were on the Ballot Nationwide 

Voters in 10 states weighed in on 41 local data center measures on Election Day. In 40 of the 41, voters chose to limit, pause, or place conditions on data center development. Notably, most of these measures did not originate with city councils or other elected officials; they came from residents who gathered signatures. 

The margins were not close: Ohio had 21 measures in 18 communities, and residents in each place voted against unchecked development. Bans passed in Granville (82 percent in favor), Trenton (80 percent), and Sunbury (79 percent). Wilmington voters rejected four data center rezoning ordinances, 80 percent to 20 percent. 

Illinois held seven advisory votes. Morgan County backed restrictions with 88 percent in favor; Joliet rejected AI data center construction with 79 percent of the vote. 

Maine approved all four town votes, including moratoriums in Wells (82 percent) and Peru (76 percent). California, Kansas, Florida, Wisconsin, and Nevada told the same story, from an 82 percent vote supporting a citywide ban in Alhambra to Boulder City’s 71 percent rejection of opening land to data centers. 

Voters in some places also removed officials who had supported data center development. Urbana, Ohio, recalled its mayor and Piqua, Ohio, recalled three city commissioners, the same night both communities voted to ban data centers. And while the broader election results may not be fully attributed to data center development, many exit polls suggested that voters considered data center development while choosing which candidates to support for Congress and other offices. 

Communities Spoke, and the Status Quo Is Over 

Exit polls also suggest that these results are not a rejection of the digital economy or even of AI. Instead, they are a rejection of how data centers have been sited and developed: behind nondisclosure agreements, under generic industrial zoning, with vague projections of water and power use, and with residents learning the details only after tech companies, developers, and city officials have made key decisions behind closed doors. 

Residents have also seen who pays. A Bloomberg analysis found wholesale electricity costs rose 267 percent from 2020 to 2025 in areas near significant data center activity. When households absorb the cost of infrastructure built for private industry, trust erodes fast. 

This frustration among the electorate crossed party lines. As researchers told Fortune, no one, left or right, likes a large corporation arriving in secret and giving a community no voice. In some communities, the response was an outright ban. In other places, voters approved clearer guidelines for development. Perry, Ohio, offers an example of the latter: 87 percent of voters supported a ballot question that requires developers seeking tax breaks to post financial guarantees. Voters are asking for accountability and transparency. 

Locally Driven Rules Must Work for Communities 

A ballot box is a blunt tool. A ban is even more blunt. The more durable answer is a data center ordinance or specific zoning requirements adopted in advance, shaped by local officials with public input, before any specific project dominates the debate. 

Communities are already showing how. Mansfield, Massachusetts, spent a winter researching, held a public hearing, and approved an ordinance at town meeting that permits only small-scale facilities, reviewed for power, water, noise, and long-term infrastructure capacity. New Castle County, Delaware, now requires a 1,000-foot setback from homes and a noise limit at the property line. Loudoun County, Virginia, moved data centers from by-right to special exception, guaranteeing a public hearing for every proposal. 

These tools can be effective, but only if they fit the legal landscape. Local officials need to know their regulatory authority. Moratoriums can buy time for that and other work when they are deployed as short-term planning tools with a firm end date. 

Defining Long-Lasting Benefits 

The usual pitch is jobs and taxes; both deserve scrutiny. The Stargate campus in Abilene, Texas, employed about 6,000 construction workers, but will support roughly 300 permanent jobs, about as many as a big-box store. And as of April 2026, 38 states offered statutory tax abatements for data centers, eroding the very revenue communities expect from typical industrial development. 

Benefits must be specific, enforceable, and built to last. Many negotiated payments are one-time or front-loaded, while forgone tax revenue recurs for 20 years or more. Community Benefits Agreements are an important tool in this context; they work best when they reflect priorities a community set before negotiations began. Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s 2025 agreement shows what that can look like: 100 percent clean electricity, closed-loop cooling, local hiring, contributions to economic development and clean energy funds, a decommissioning plan, and an enforcement process. 

Data center development must leave a community better off than it found it. That means a net positive effect on our society, our environment, and our economy, measured over the life of the facility, not just at groundbreaking. If a community approves a project that draws on scarce water, raises household utility bills, or occupies land better suited to housing, for example, the benefits of the project must more than make up for those costs, and residents should be able to see the return on investment.  

The Good News: This Is Solvable 

None of this means data centers and communities cannot coexist. Their scale, cooling design, energy sourcing, and operating practices can be tailored to local conditions, and sound land policy is how communities make that happen. 

Advance planning, genuine public engagement, utility coordination, clear benefit priorities, and a well-built specific ordinance put communities in control of their own destiny. Voters made their demand clear on November 3. A more sustainable, transparent, community-centered form of data center development is possible, and the tools to deliver it already exist. 

John Farner is executive director of Land and Water at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 

Lead image: Aerial view of large data center campus in Hutto, Texas. Credit: BackyardProduction via iStock/Getty Images Plus.