Forty-one data-centre questions are on the 3 November ballot. OpenAI’s offer to give power back is not a plant

Ballotpedia’s list of data-centre measures for 2026 runs to at least 50, in 13 states. Forty-one of them are on the 3 November ballot. Ohio has 21, across 18 jurisdictions, which is more than any other state. Illinois has seven. Six measures were decided earlier in the year, and three are set for later dates, including two in Clarksville, Arkansas, on 1 December. A place on a ballot is not a ban. It is a question. Forbes, writing on 2 November, put Ohio’s existing estate at 154 data centres already operating, 27 under construction and 57 being planned. Those are Forbes’s counts of the state the questions are being asked in. They are not a forecast of how the votes go.

The direction of the questions is not all one way. GridSight’s reading of the Ballotpedia list, updated on 1 November, counts 26 measures that would limit development and 13 that would support it, plus two in Adams County, Ohio, that would create zoning. It says residents petitioned 25 of the 41 onto the ballot, and that 17 would prohibit data centres outright or above a size threshold. Forbes says thirteen Ohio municipalities have a ban on the paper. In Conneaut and in Defiance, a yes vote would prohibit a data centre whose peak load is above 25 megawatts. Some of the others are limited to what the text calls a high-impact facility, rather than every server room. Two townships, Monroe and Sprigg, are voting on zoning that would keep a rural character and, in practice, stop a data centre. Forbes says those townships are possible sites, including a 1,000-acre parcel being evaluated for Amazon Web Services. Evaluated is not leased.

A promise to switch off is not a power station

OpenAI’s answer to the same argument, published on 2 November, is a programme it calls Grid Protectors. The pilot is a campus it plans in Effingham County, Georgia, which the related utility papers call Project Camellia. OpenAI says it has agreed to pay the full infrastructure and electric-service cost of serving the project. Once the campus is operating, the company says it can cut what it draws when the grid is under strain. The agreement with Georgia Power includes up to 1,000 megawatts of that flexible demand. OpenAI compares 1,000 megawatts to the average electricity use of roughly 700,000 households, and to air-conditioning kept on in extreme heat. The campus, it also says, is still in development. A reduction that begins after the halls are on is not a reduction available this summer.

The savings number needs the same care. Georgia Power projects about $950 million a year in lower customer costs from 2029, from its portfolio of large-load agreements and from expected growth, including Project Camellia. That is the utility’s figure for a book of customers, not a cheque from one campus, and not a figure OpenAI put on its own page as the value of the 1,000 megawatts. Flexibility can, the utility says, mean it builds less new generation than an inflexible load of the same size would require. Less generation is still a plan. It is not a turbine that was cancelled this week. Voters in ten states are being asked to allow or refuse buildings. OpenAI is offering, on a site that is not built, to hand power back on a bad day. Neither of those is a megawatt that is connected tonight.