{"id":207124,"date":"2026-06-21T21:01:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T02:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=207124"},"modified":"2026-06-21T21:01:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T02:01:04","slug":"data-center-ban-wont-be-on-fall-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2026\/06\/21\/data-center-ban-wont-be-on-fall-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"Data center ban won’t be on fall ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Megan Henry\/Ohio Capital Journal<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ohio voters will not have a chance to vote to ban data centers in the November election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conserve Ohio, the grassroots organization behind the proposed constitutional amendment, said they are now hoping to make the 2027 ballot. The amendment would prohibit building data centers with a peak load of more than 25 megawatts per month, which would prevent most modern data centers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to make it clear: we will not be stopping,\u201d Conserve Ohio said in a statement. \u201cConstruction won\u2019t be stopping, so signature gathering and community action will not be stopping.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conserve Ohio originally was trying to make this year\u2019s ballot after the Ohio Ballot Board gave petitioners the green light to start collecting signatures in April, but they were up against a tight deadline. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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A ballot issue that could ban large scale data centers has been delayed. Van Wert independent file photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThe July 1 deadline was our best case scenario for the quickest possible action,\u201d Conserve Ohio said in a statement. \u201cInternally, we set that as our ideal target and it just didn\u2019t pan out. We are not going to be submitting this year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amendment would have needed more than 413,000 signatures from at least 44 of Ohio\u2019s 88 counties by July 1 to get on this year\u2019s ballot. The signatures they have collected so far remain valid since they did not submit them to the Ohio Secretary of State. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conserve Ohio has collected more than 70,000 signatures as of June 18, according to their campaign. The counties with the most signatures are Lucas County (6,482), Stark County (6,329), and Butler County (4,030).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t change when we began, but we can determine how it ends,\u201d Conserve Ohio said. \u201cAll is not lost. The end goal has not changed. Our resolve has not changed.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conserve Ohio is only using volunteers to collect signatures, and they have more than 1,000 volunteers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ohio has more than 200 data centers, the sixth-highest state in the country, according to Pew Research Center. Most of the data centers are in central Ohio. Cincinnati has 26 and Cleveland has 22, according to the Data Center Map. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

More than a dozen Ohio cities have enacted temporary moratoriums on data centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ohio lawmakers have yet to pass any data center legislation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ohio House Bill 646 would, among other things, limit the size of new sales tax breaks from 100 percent down to 50 percent. But this would not apply to any of the companies with existing contracts, like Meta, Google and Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state provided almost $1.57 billion in sales-tax exemptions on purchases of data center equipment and construction materials last year, according to the Ohio Department of Taxation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A large data center can use as much electricity as 100,000 homes, according to the Office of Ohio Consumers\u2019 Counsel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data centers used four percent of all U.S. electricity in 2023 and that is expected to grow to nine percent by 2030, according to the counsel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A large data center can use up to five million gallons of water per day, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Some data centers, such as the one slated to be built in Van Wert, use a closed loop system, which requires far less water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawmakers in at least 14 states \u2014 Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin \u2014 have introduced legislation that would temporarily ban data centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Megan Henry\/Ohio Capital Journal Ohio voters will not have a chance to vote to ban data centers in the November election.  Conserve Ohio, the grassroots organization behind the proposed constitutional amendment, said they are now hoping to make the 2027 ballot. The amendment would prohibit building data centers with a peak load of more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-29 03:40:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207124"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207129,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207124\/revisions\/207129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}