What towns fight about at the mic

Places ranked on data centers

How these rankings work

Where it comes from

Public meetings of city councils, county boards, planning commissions and school boards, read from each body's own video and transcripts.

What is counted

Every remark about the topic, found by the same search terms in every place and marked for, against, mixed or neutral by an automated reader, with a second model checking each one. Mixed and neutral remarks are not counted.

People, not remarks

Each person counts once per place and topic, on the side they took most often, however many times they spoke. A person split evenly takes no side.

How officials count

Today every speaker counts once: in the meetings counted now, a speaker's role is only an automated guess. Once our roster confirms who an official is, elected and appointed officials will count as 3, since they decide the outcome and speak on the record under their own names. Public commenters and staff count as 1 and are never named.

The score

Weighted voices against, divided by weighted voices for and against. Before ranking, every place gets 10 more voices at the national rate for the topic, so a place with four voices cannot top the list by chance; a place with a hundred barely moves.

Who is ranked

A place where at least 10 people spoke on the question, each counted once, at at least 2 different meetings in the last 24 months. The weight for officials orders the ranked places; it never lets a place in. Places with fewer show as lighter dots and are not ranked.

Same-size places

Places are ranked only against places their size: large (250,000 or more), mid-size (50,000 to 250,000) and small (under 50,000).

What it is not

Not a poll of residents. It is the public record of who showed up and what officials said. The places are those whose meetings we hold, not a sample of the country.