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Voters Rejected Data Centers 40 Times Out of 41. OpenAI Responded.

Voters Rejected Data Centers 40 Times Out of 41. OpenAI Responded.

Policy & Regulation

On November 3, voters favored limits on data centers in 40 of 41 local ballot measures. Two days later OpenAI pledged to pay full power costs and drop NDAs at campuses it owns, but not at partner sites.

AP
Staff
November 9, 2026 · 2 min read

Voters in towns and cities across the US sided against new data centers almost everywhere they were asked on November 3, 2026. Per Ballotpedia, 41 local data center measures were on the ballot, and the result favoured limits on data center development in 40 of them. Two days later, OpenAI published a "National Community Compact" promising to pay the full power costs of campuses it owns and to stop asking local officials to sign secrecy agreements.

What did voters decide?

Of the 41 contests, 27 approved new limits and 13 rejected measures that would have allowed more development. The margins were often lopsided:

  • Alhambra, California: banned data centers in the city, 83% to 17%.
  • Wells, Maine: a 180-day moratorium, 82% to 18%.
  • Edgewater, Florida: banned new data centers from being approved, built or expanded, 77% to 23%.
  • Emporia, Kansas: banned high-impact data centers, 60% to 40%.
  • Grove City, Ohio: requires a public vote on very large projects using 50+ acres, 20+ megawatts or 500,000+ gallons of water a day, 55% to 45%.
  • Wilmington, Ohio and Boulder City, Nevada: voters rejected rezonings that would have allowed data centers, by roughly 70% to 80%.

The one exception was Harwood, North Dakota, where voters rejected extra review for industrial projects including data centers, 76% to 24%. A proposed Ohio statewide amendment banning data centers over 25 megawatts did not make the ballot; its campaign is aiming for 2027.

What is OpenAI promising?

OpenAI announced its compact on November 5. For future "compute campuses" it owns and operates, it says it will:

  • Pay the full cost of its electricity and the grid upgrades needed to serve it, and post financial guarantees so residents do not pay if a project is cancelled.
  • Publish water and power use for each site, plus an annual public report and a local agreement for each campus.
  • Stop asking public officials to sign nondisclosure agreements, except in narrow security and trade-secret cases.
  • Invest 80 million dollars in Effingham County, Georgia, and 40 million in Pike County, Ohio.

There is a big caveat. The compact covers only campuses OpenAI owns. Capacity built and owned by partners such as Oracle, which supplies much of OpenAI’s computing power, is not included. OpenAI also asked lawmakers to apply similar rules to the whole industry.

Why is this happening now?

Because the local backlash we tracked through the autumn, from Hermantown, Minnesota to Victoria, Australia and Loudoun County, turned into votes. Residents worry about higher power bills, water use, noise and deals done behind closed doors. AI stocks also had their worst day since April 2025 that week as investors weighed what tougher local rules mean for the build-out.

For the AI industry, the message is clear: communities now expect to be paid, informed and asked. Whether one company’s voluntary pledge is enough, when the biggest builders are its partners, is the open question.

See Ballotpedia’s full list of data center measures and Reuters’ report on OpenAI’s compact.

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Up Next
Anthropic Warns Its AI May Soon Speed Up Its Own Research

Anthropic Warns Its AI May Soon Speed Up Its Own Research

AI Safety

Anthropic's amended IPO filing says future models may imminently hit its AI-driven research acceleration threshold. METR estimates progress is running about 2x faster, mostly due to AI. Q3 revenue neared $17B.

AP
Staff
November 9, 2026 · 3 min read

Anthropic’s amended IPO filing, published November 2, 2026, contains a striking warning: its future models "may imminently meet" the point where AI is dramatically speeding up Anthropic’s own research. Three days later, independent evaluator METR estimated that Anthropic’s capability progress is running at roughly twice its earlier pace, with about 80% of that speedup coming from AI. The same filing shows nearly 17 billion dollars in quarterly revenue and 895 billion dollars in compute commitments.

What exactly did Anthropic warn about?

Anthropic’s Responsible Scaling Policy, its rulebook for risky AI, has a tripwire for what it calls "dramatically accelerated progress attributable to AI." In simple terms: the moment AI starts doing so much of the research that the next models arrive twice as fast. That is the early version of what researchers call self-improving AI.

The filing says no current model has been designated as crossing the threshold, but future ones may "imminently" do so. It also admits Anthropic has "in the past not identified" significant acceleration until after it happened. It notes Claude wrote over 90% of contributions to Anthropic’s codebase in September, and engineers now ship more than 45 times as much code per day as in 2024.

Crossing the threshold triggers fuller outside review of Anthropic’s risk reports. It does not force a pause, which remains at Anthropic’s discretion.

What did METR find?

METR, an independent AI evaluation group, assessed Anthropic from August to October and published on November 5. It estimates Anthropic’s capability index was rising about 1.9 times faster than its earlier pace as of October, landing on "about 2x" overall with a plausible range of roughly 1.3x to 3x. It attributes around 80% of the speedup to Anthropic’s use of AI, but calls that a subjective estimate.

METR stressed its limits. It did not get the same access as employees, could not directly verify data or test unreleased models, and said Anthropic removed much of the most important evidence before publication. It did not certify that the 2x tripwire had been crossed, though it said it may have been. Anthropic’s August risk report put acceleration "below 2x"; METR’s own calculation from private figures came to 1.97x.

What do the financials show?

Fast growth and enormous bills. Per The Next Web, Q3 revenue was nearly 17 billion dollars, about twelve times a year earlier, and 33.2 billion for the first nine months. The quarter had an operating loss of about 567 million dollars, after an operating profit of about 974 million in Q2. The headline 23.3 billion dollar net loss is mostly an accounting charge on convertible notes that rises with Anthropic’s valuation and largely disappears at listing.

The number that stands out is 895.4 billion dollars in purchase commitments, almost all for computing power, with about 448 billion due by 2030. Anthropic plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT before the end of November, though Reuters reports some investors worry the current AI backlash could affect timing.

Why does this matter?

Because it is the first time a frontier lab has told regulators and investors, in a legal filing, that self-accelerating AI may be close. It fits a pattern of agents slipping their safeguards and Anthropic’s own call for the industry to slow down. It also sets up the most-watched listing of the year, which we previewed in OpenAI’s valuation cut.

Read a breakdown of the filing’s warning and The Next Web on the financials.

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