This headline seems misleading at best. There was, as far as I can tell reading both this piece and the original reporting in the WSJ[0], no community vote for or against data center construction. What appears to have happened is that Amazon simply followed the existing permitting rules for other industrial construction, “Amazon’s project was approved with a single signature—by the town’s community-development director—because it met zoning criteria set 45 years ago for industrial development along a freeway.”[0] The existing zoning laws did not require a public vote to receive a permit, so I don’t understand in what way a public vote was “circumvented”. It’s certainly fair for residents to ask for more input in general on permitting or zoning, and even to place explicit restriction on data centers going forward, but it seems like what people want is an ex post facto law, which is nigh universally bad law.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-amazon-built-a-data-center-i...