10 States With Data Centers on the Ballot All Voted to Ban Them

Election Day 2026 revealed just how much of the country loathes Silicon Valley’s data center projects.

Communities across the nation voted on 41 data center-related ballot initiatives on Tuesday. The measures were introduced in California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

At least 33 of those municipalities voted to keep data centers out, according to votes tracked by Data Centers on the Ballot. At least six localities specifically voted to ban data center construction and halt the development of all planned facilities. Just one measure in Harwood, North Dakota, counted as a victory for the industry, as voters decided against restricting data center construction

The vast majority of the data center-related ballot initiatives were introduced and decided in Ohio, which has recently become a buzzing hub of activity for tech companies looking to build the water-zapping facilities. Over the last year, some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent AI firms have poured millions of dollars into races across the state and on both sides of the aisle in an apparent effort to influence the region’s politics.

Exactly why AI-backed money was funneled into the Ohio race boils down to a perfect confluence of factors across the state. Ohio has relatively cheap land, plentiful resources, and enough power plants to fuel the data centers required to support the AI industry’s seemingly imminent boom.

But the same can be said for many other regions in the country. In Kansas, where land is similarly cheap and plentiful, voters adopted some of the most restrictive proposals on the table. One such measure banned the construction of “high-impact data centers” (facilities that use more than 100,000 gallons of water per day) for 10 years, stipulating that the decision could only be reversed by public vote, according to an analysis by Multistate.us.

Mounting evidence that the public actually hates data centers doesn’t bode well for Donald Trump, who has spent months attempting to convince Americans to let the industry build as he cozies up to major tech executives.

Recent polling indicates that the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans, have no interest in permitting the tech industry to build AI facilities in their backyards. An August survey published by Heatmap revealed that 75 percent of the public opposes data center development in their communities.

More jurisdictions are expected to take a stance on the issue in the coming weeks. Voters in Arkansas and North Dakota will vote on whether to finance or prohibit data centers on December 1 and December 15, respectively.

Much like 2022, the 2026 midterm elections proved the majority of voters support reproductive rights and abortion access.

Four states had abortion on the ballot. Nevada and Virginia voted in favor of allowing abortions within state lines. Missouri voted against repealing a constitutional amendment supporting abortion access that was introduced via a ballot initiative in 2024. Idaho was the sole exception on Tuesday as voters sided against a citizen-initiated statute that would have enshrined abortion access as a statutory right.

Nevadans, Virginians, and Missourans voted 63 percent, 62 percent, and 55 percent, respectively. Idahoans, meanwhile, voted by 56 percent.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority in June 2022, abortion has become a nonstop losing streak for Republicans, pitting the party’s long-standing policies against their increasingly dire ramifications.

States that enforced aggressive abortion restrictions saw medical brain drains, with large swaths of medical professionals moving elsewhere. Other states with such rules witnessed the horrific reality of allowing the legislature into the doctor’s office (see: the case of Adriana Smith, a Georgia nurse who died in 2025 but nonetheless was forced to remain on life support as an incubation chamber after doctors discovered a nine-week fetus in her abdomen. Her family had no say in that matter).

The bad PR has led to a quiet stripping of pro-life policies from conservative platforms across the country, with the GOP futilely attempting to ditch the “pro-life” branding altogether in an effort to skirt more electoral losses.

National surveys indicate that the vast majority of the country supports abortion access. In a poll published by the Pew Research Center in March, 60 percent of respondents said abortion should be legal in pretty much all cases, while only 38 percent said it should be illegal in most cases.

Washington voters decided to keep their state’s millionaire tax on Tuesday.

Fifty-eight percent of Washingtonians voted against Initiative 645, an effort to repeal the state’s millionaire tax led by right-wing donors and PACs, including Let’s Go Washington. The PAC, headed by conservative hedge fund executive Brian Heywood, was the most active group in the $13.1 million failed effort to overturn the 9.9 percent tax on income over $1 million a year.

“I can’t tell you how many people have left the state,” Heywood told The Guardian in October. “My business partner moved to Arizona. I probably know 50 people that are deca- or centi-millionaires that have left the state.”

The millionaire tax, which was signed into law in March, uses the funding to expand eligibility for the Working Families Tax Credit, allowing 460,000 more households a cash rebate of up to $1,330.

Americans made history Tuesday night. Amidst the seasonal pandemonium of ballot counting and number crunching, the country elected several political firsts.

Michigan elected its first Muslim senator, choosing Dr. Abdul El-Sayed over Republican candidate Mike Rogers. El-Sayed ran a shrewd campaign, canvassing across the state and overcoming a nasty strain of Islamophobia while holding earnest, intelligent conversations with conservatives and liberals alike.

Halfway across the country, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won her bid for Georgia’s gubernatorial office, making her the first Black woman to hold a governorship in U.S. history. Her winning campaign platform promised to push back on the White House, to find relief for inflated gas and grocery prices, to eliminate state income tax for public school teachers, and to impose a moratorium on data center development.

In Illinois, voters chose to send Juliana Stratton to the Senate. Stratton’s admittance to the upper chamber in January will mark the first time in U.S. history that three Black women have served in the Senate simultaneously. She joins Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. The previous record was set in 2025, when Blunt Rochester and Alsobrooks joined the 119th Congress.

Nearby, Ohioans elected Dr. Amy Acton as their first woman governor, besting billionaire tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy’s final campaign push centered around a disturbing ad that featured Acton’s estranged mother declaring that something was wrong with the 60-year-old Democrat.

She wasn’t the only gubernatorial first. Deb Haaland, who served as secretary of the interior under former President Joe Biden, became the first Native woman to be elected governor when New Mexicans cast their ballots Tuesday.

The diversity achievements also extended to Texas, where civil rights attorney Gina Hinojosa became the first Latina governor in the nation.

Other candidates that broke the mold include former Minnesota state Representative Peggy Flanagan, who became the first Native woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. The Native community’s groundbreaking moment could be made that much sweeter by a win for former Representative Mary Peltola, who is currently fractions of a percentage point behind Republican Dan Sullivan for Alaska’s Senate seat as the Last Frontier continues to tabulate its ballots.

Delivering a speech from St. Paul, Minnesota, Flanagan noted that her victory signaled a breakthrough in the nationwide fight against Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

“You said no more war. No more health care cuts. No more taking away food from children and seniors. No more selling this country off to the highest bidder. And no more masked goons shooting our neighbors,” Flanagan said, according to the Minnesota Reformer.

And nearly 50 years after Harvey Milk was elected as the country’s first openly gay lawmaker, New Hampshire elected former Representative Chris Pappas as the first openly gay man to become a U.S. senator.

Maryland voters approved a ballot measure Tuesday amending the state’s Constitution to allow Democratic-led congressional redistricting.

The measure, known as Question 3, passed 60 percent to 40 percent, with 77 percent of votes counted.

The measure does not enact a new map, but gives Maryland state legislators greater powers in drawing congressional district boundaries. Maryland has eight congressional districts, and all but one, the 1st district, are represented by a Democrat. The state Constitution currently requires compact districts that respect “natural boundaries,” and the 1st district, represented by Republican Andy Harris, is mostly confined to Maryland’s eastern side of the Chesapeake Bay.

Republicans fought the ballot question in court, but in September, the state Supreme Court allowed the amendment to be put to a vote in November’s elections. In the weeks leading up to the election, Maryland’s Democratic Governor Wes Moore campaigned for the measure, and former President Barack Obama lent his endorsement, filming a video ad urging voters to approve it.

Missouri also voted on redistricting Tuesday night, and the Show Me State’s residents blocked a Republican-led effort to gerrymander the state in favor of conservatives.

Last year, Donald Trump began pushing Republican-led states to gerrymander their districts in order to prevent a Democratic majority in Congress from investigating him. This set off a gerrymandering war, and Republicans successfully put new maps in place in seven states: Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio. That was helped by the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act in April, allowing Southern states to eliminate majority-Black districts.

Until now, Democrats only had one successful redistricting effort in California and a favorable ruling from a federal judge in Utah, who rejected a Republican-drawn map in favor of independent redistricting reform approved by voters in 2018, creating another Democratic district. For 2028, it appears that Democrats are on their way to picking up another congressional seat in Maryland.