Data center boosters routinely accuse local opponents of serving China or obstructing progress. In Coweta, Oklahoma, supporters of a proposed hyperscale project appear to have answered authentic opposition with something less democratic: phony support from real residents.

“Dear Vice Mayor Barnett, Project Atlas would generate millions for city services and schools, and all the needed upgrades are paid for by the developer. This seems like reasonable, low-impact growth. Please support this opportunity for Coweta.”

The data center lobby may have money, consultants, and automated emails. Its opponents have something more durable: actual voters and the truth.

The message appeared to come from a known Coweta resident. When the vice mayor contacted the supposed sender, the resident replied that he had not written it and opposed the project. Fox23 News confirmed the account with the victim.

That was not an isolated irregularity. Local farmer and activist Darren Blanchard obtained public records showing nearly 300 substantially identical messages supporting the data center. Many arrived at strange hours and apparently originated through an advocacy website that automatically generated letters to council members.

Automated advocacy tools aren’t new. But using the personal information of real people to send messages in their names without permission is not grassroots politics. It is political identity theft.

“What we suspect as to what was going on is that local citizens’ data — names, address, phone numbers, emails — was purchased, and probably a script was written and likely inputted into this advocacy website,” Blanchard said in an interview on my podcast. “And then nearly 300 people were impersonated within the community of Coweta, asking the city council to approve the data center. It was completely made up.”

The irony is hard to miss. Companies seeking to build facilities that warehouse and process vast quantities of information allegedly used residents’ personal data to impersonate them and manufacture consent.

The most grotesque message allegedly came from a dead man. Blanchard said a council member received an email supporting the project in the name of a deceased relative — on the second anniversary of that relative’s death.

That message persuaded city officials that the matter required the attention of law enforcement. Yet the city has redacted the names attached to the nearly 300 emails, making it harder for residents to learn whether their identities were used. Blanchard says an appeal to the Oklahoma attorney general has gone nowhere.

The proposed 270-acre hyperscale development from San Francisco-based Beale Infrastructure, backed by Blue Owl Capital, was abandoned at the end of March after intense local opposition and scrutiny of the campaign supporting it.

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Coweta is not an isolated case of public resistance. In Box Elder County, Utah, Kevin O’Leary proposed a data center complex projected to consume enormous amounts of electricity and occupy a footprint larger than thousands of Walmart Supercenters. A public-records review by the Salt Lake Tribune found overwhelming opposition in emails to county commissioners. Just seven messages — about 2% — supported the plan.

The voters delivered an even clearer verdict. Last month, two Box Elder County commissioners who backed the project were crushed in their Republican primaries. Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, who played a prominent role in the state entity that approved the development, also lost.

In Calvert County, Maryland, Republican voters booted all three commissioners who had signed nondisclosure agreements with data center companies and then opposed a proposed moratorium.

These defeats expose the basic political problem facing Big Tech. Opposition to giant data centers is deep, local, and often bipartisan. Residents worry about electricity demand, water use, tax subsidies, land consumption, secrecy, surveillance, and the transfer of private risk to the public.

Those concerns cannot be erased by labeling opponents agents of China or enemies of innovation. Nor can they be overcome honestly by sending hundreds of nearly identical emails in the names of people who never authorized them.

Astroturfing usually tries to make a small constituency look large. The Coweta campaign went further: It manufactured a constituency from stolen identities, including one voice from beyond the grave.

Republican officials need to decide which side they are on. They can stand with citizens demanding transparency and control over their communities, or with globalists and techno-feudalists willing to fabricate public support.

The data center lobby may have money, consultants, and automated emails. Its opponents have something more durable: actual voters and the truth.