TOPEKA, Kansas — Voters in three Kansas communities — El Dorado, Emporia and Ottawa — approved bans on large data centers in Tuesday's November 3, 2026 midterm election, KWCH reported, joining a nationwide ballot backlash in which voters in 10 states weighed 41 local data-center measures and the restriction side led almost everywhere. All three Kansas measures were citizen-initiated, and all three passed with at least 60 percent of the vote, the Kansas News Service reported.
Source: Kansas Public Radio (KWCH / Kansas News Service)
In El Dorado, in Butler County, voters approved a citizen-initiated petition that prohibits the installation and operation of “High Impact Data Centers” — and certain energy storage systems — for a period of 10 years. KWCH reported the El Dorado ordinance does not ban all data centers, only those with a capacity of 10 megawatts and above, and unofficial county returns put the vote at about 71 percent to 29 percent in favour of the ban.
In Emporia, in Lyon County, voters approved their measure by 4,346 votes to 2,891 — 60.1 percent — in unofficial county returns. The Emporia ordinance prohibits the construction, installation, operation and maintenance of high-impact data centers in the city for 10 years and also covers large battery storage systems. Reason magazine reported the result means developers will almost certainly have to scrap already announced plans for a hyperscale data center in Emporia. The ballot tracker Data Centers on the Ballot defines Emporia's high-impact test as a facility demanding more than 10 megawatts of power or using more than 100,000 gallons of water a day.
In Ottawa, in Franklin County, voters came out strongly for a ban on any utility-intensive data centers, with unofficial results reported at roughly 2,882 votes to 1,129 — about 69 percent to 31 percent. Ottawa's measure prohibits construction of any data center that uses more than 25 megawatts, and unlike the other two Kansas bans it carries no specified expiration date, KWCH reported. Ottawa residents had already lobbied successfully to cancel a proposed data center in the city, according to KSHB reporting cited by Reason, and supporters had to sue the city to get the question onto the ballot.
A nationwide ballot backlash
Kansas was one front in a much wider fight. Ballotpedia counted 41 data-center-related local measures across 10 states on November 3 — 21 of them in Ohio alone, where voters near the big Columbus-area clusters of Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft campuses passed ban after ban. The Data Centers on the Ballot tracker, in unofficial counts as of midday November 4, found the restriction side leading in 44 of the 45 measures with a determined result, taking 72.8 percent of the combined vote; the only measure the pro-development side won was in Harwood, North Dakota. All results remain unofficial until they are certified.
The concerns driving the votes, as reported across the coverage, are power, water and taxes: high-impact data centers can demand as much electricity as a small city and use very large volumes of water for cooling, and residents in town after town questioned whether the jobs created justify the strain on local grids, water supplies and tax bases. An August 2026 Embold Research poll of 2,045 registered voters, reported by Heatmap, found 75 percent opposed a new data center near their home.
In Emporia, the campaign was organised by Emporia Neighbors United. Its Jay Vehige told the Kansas News Service the referendums show Kansans are concerned about the centres' environmental impact: “…what it tells me is that Kansans want to protect our state. They want to protect every little nook and cranny of Kansas, and that's a beautiful thing.” Vehige said the three Kansas communities worked together to write their ballot questions and will help other cities craft similar measures.
Legal hurdles still ahead
Passing the vote is not the last word in two of the three towns. Emporia's ordinance cannot take effect until legal questions around it are resolved or a court orders otherwise — the position the city itself stated when it placed the question on the ballot, confirmed in a city statement on November 4. Ottawa's ordinance likewise still faces a court ruling on whether it is legally eligible. El Dorado's ban, by contrast, has a clean 10-year term in the ordinance voters approved.
In the Kansas measures, “high-impact” is defined by size: facilities above 10 megawatts of peak power demand in El Dorado and Emporia, and above 25 megawatts in Ottawa. Smaller facilities below those thresholds are not banned by these votes.
What happens next: county and state officials will certify the unofficial results in the coming days; the Emporia and Ottawa court reviews will decide when — and whether — those two ordinances take legal effect; and developers behind Emporia's announced hyperscale plans must decide whether to scrap, shrink below the 10-megawatt line, or challenge the ban. With restriction measures leading in 44 of 45 decided ballots nationwide, the Kansas votes are likely to be cited by campaigns in other states preparing measures for 2027.