The Ohio ballot drive to ban data centers above 25 megawatts entered its sixth week of signature gathering this week without a statewide signature total. Conserve Ohio, the political action committee circulating the petition, has held local signing events from Lorain County to Trumbull and Cincinnati but has not published a running tally toward the 413,488 valid signatures it needs by July 1. [1] [2]
The paper noted Monday that Ohio had turned data centers into a signature-count story. The follow-up question is whether the count exists. Six weeks in, the only public numbers are at the table — about 200 Mahoning and Trumbull County residents in Niles on April 18; 40 more Monday evening in Niles; an unspecified number at Lorain County Community College's April 22 Earth Day event. [3] [4] No county-by-county breakdown. No signature distribution chart against the 44-county minimum. No projection.
The contrast on the other side of the meter is sharp. American Electric Power Ohio's most recent filing reports 17,861 megawatts of contracted data center load on its system, of which 5,642 megawatts have signed under the new tariff structure that asks data center customers to pay for the capacity they reserve, whether or not they use it. [5] Eenergy News Network's coverage notes the tariff is the regulator's attempt to predict — and price — the load before it lands. [6] AEP is doing the arithmetic the petitioners have not.
The procedural calendar makes the silence harder to read. The deadline is July 1. The bar is 413,488 valid signatures, which, after invalidations, organizers have publicly told the Ohio Register they hope to clear by submitting roughly 700,000 raw. [1] Volunteers are working all 88 counties, but signatures have to come from voters in at least 44, and each of those 44 must clear half the percentage threshold. A drive without a public tally at week six can mean three things: the tally is being held back as leverage; the tally is being held back because it is bad; or the campaign is decentralized enough that no central tally yet exists. None of the three is a statewide number.
What organizers have said is that the campaign is "less about a specific outcome and more about ensuring public participation," in the words of Lorain County volunteer Elizabeth Rattray at the LCCC event. [4] That is the posture of a campaign treating the petition as civic theater. AEP's 17,861-megawatt filing is the document treating it as procurement.
The petition itself would amend Article II of the Ohio Constitution to prohibit the construction of any data center with an aggregate power demand exceeding 25 megawatts a month. [7] Ohio already hosts roughly 200 data centers, by Conserve Ohio's count; the threshold would block the next generation, particularly the AI-training campuses Amazon and Meta have brought to central Ohio over the past three years. [8] The amendment would take effect immediately on certification of the November result.
The state has no companion mechanism to gather and publish the running total. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose's office certifies signatures only after a petition is submitted, not as it accumulates. [7] The Ohio Ballot Board has not yet scheduled the single-issue determination meeting that has to precede final review.
Wednesday's question is whether Conserve Ohio's silence is the campaign's strategy or its diagnostic. The structural reading is that a regulator has produced a public load number — 17,861 megawatts contracted, 5,642 megawatts under the new tariff — and a citizen drive has not produced its corresponding number, and that asymmetry now defines the policy debate. The petitioners need a number by July 1. AEP already has one.
-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco