The paper reported at week three that the Ohio data-center ballot signature drive had crossed 60,000 verified signatures against the 413,487 needed for the November 2026 ballot. The week-four tally, posted Thursday morning by Ohioans Against Data Center Sprawl, is 94,000 verified and roughly 118,000 gross [1]. That is the fastest four-week pace a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment has run in Ohio since the 2018 redistricting amendment [2].

The arithmetic is not yet comfortable. The campaign needs roughly 319,000 more verified signatures in ten weeks to clear the July 1 deadline — an average of 32,000 a week against a current pace of 23,500. What has changed this week is the composition of signers. The Lordstown and New Albany petition circulators report that roughly 40 percent of signatures are now coming from suburban Republican voters, up from 18 percent in March [3]. The ballot measure is no longer a progressive-coded fight.

That is the story nationally. If Ohio clears the signature threshold, the question on the ballot is a constitutional cap on new data-center construction above 500 megawatts without local supermajority approval — a hard stop, not a tax. The AI-infrastructure buildout that OpenAI, Oracle, Meta, and xAI have collectively priced at over $300 billion of US capex over the next three years routes through a handful of grid nodes, and Ohio is one of the largest. A yes vote in November would reshape the capex assumption. The paper's technology desk will watch week five verified totals against the 32,000 pace required.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York