An Ohio town of 17,000 will vote on a data centre ban before any developer has applied

Site selection usually engages a town after the developer files. The leverage arrives with the rezoning request. Defiance inverted that order: the signature drive began once word spread that technology companies were interested in the county, and no project has been announced, according to the Reuters report carried by mezha.net ^[3][1]. The stated concerns are farmland, electricity demand and water use ^[5]. Becca Rupp, who founded Citizens for Responsible Development - Defiance, said in that account, translated from English into Ukrainian, that most people feel big business has taken advantage of their trust ^[21].

The 71% from Bowling Green State University, published August 31, measured support for a temporary ban on new construction ^[8]. Defiance is not voting on a pause. The ballot question would bar every data centre except the smallest ^[2]. For the statewide figure to predict the local result, a voter who wants six months of breathing room also has to want a standing prohibition. The account does not say where "smallest" stops, in megawatts, acres or square feet ^[24]. That threshold decides which projects the ordinance would still admit in a town that has just voted no.

Statewide, the incentive itself is unsettled. Ohio's tax filings, released over the summer, show more than $2 billion of sales tax revenue forgone across 2024 and 2025 under data centre exemptions, with Amazon and Meta among the companies that used them ^[6][7]. That averages above $1 billion a year ^[22]. Governor Mike DeWine has paused consideration of new tax break applications until the legislature sets rules, and lawmakers left for summer recess without passing any ^[9][10].

Marcy Kaptur's redrawn district now includes Defiance and other conservative rural areas, and she is facing one of the hardest re-election fights of her forty years in Congress ^[11]. Her television ads tie the exemptions to her Republican opponent, Derek Merrin ^[12]. In a statement rendered in the same Ukrainian translation, Kaptur said politicians let these companies shift the cost of their enormous energy and utility needs onto Ohio consumers, then handed them billions of dollars in tax breaks to make the deal more attractive ^[13]. The 10-15% June rise in Defiance household electricity bills is FirstEnergy's number; the attribution of it to data centre load is Kaptur's ^[14]. Merrin did not respond to requests for comment, and wrote in a Facebook post last week that the tax break Kaptur blames him for passed before he was elected to the Ohio legislature ^[15].

The same argument is running at higher spend in the Senate race, where Republican Jon Husted faces former senator Sherrod Brown, who lost his seat in 2024 ^[16]. Brown has called Husted "data centres' best friend" ^[18]. Republican groups put $14 million into Ohio advertising in a single week while recent polls showed Brown ahead ^[17]. Husted's campaign rejected the criticism and pointed to his authorship of legislation on what data centre operators must pay ^[20].

The reproducible part here is the sequence. A signature drive plus a council moratorium, both run before an application exists, settle the local question before a developer can join the conversation ^[2][4]. There is nothing to cancel in Defiance, which is what makes the ordinance cheap to pass. The vote is November 3 ^[2].