Voters delivered a stern rebuke of data centers in ballot propositions across the country on Tuesday.
Except in one tiny North Dakota town.
The citizens of Harwood, who number about 940, shot down a measure that would have given residents a greater say in how large projects, such as AI data centers, are constructed in the town.
The vote wasn’t exactly close, either. Some 325 voted against the measure, compared to 105 who voted for it, according to the North Dakota Secretary of State’s office.
Of all 45 data-center-related propositions on the ballot across the country on Tuesday, Harwood stood out as the sole constituency in support of them. The other 44 fell on the anti-data-center side, according to Redbud Consulting, a ballot tracking firm.
And for residents of Harwood, the issue is germane. A $3 billion AI data center equal in size to 17 football fields is under construction in the community’s backyard. The company building it hopes to employ 200 people — a number equal to about 20% of the city’s population.
“It’s frustrating,” Mark Coolidge, a 59-year-old resident who voted for the measure, told Business Insider.
“We are the people that have to live with this type of industry as a neighbor,” said Mike Swartz, a 47-year-old resident who advocated for the proposition. “Do we not have any say in what we want for the community some have vested decades into calling their home?”
In an interview, Blake Hankey, the mayor of Harwood, said he didn’t support the measure. He said the language of the proposition was imprecise and that some of the stipulations “would have been financially burdensome to a city our size.”
“This amendment to the home rule charter wasn’t strictly aimed at data centers,” he said. “It was any kind of business coming to town.”
He also said the proposition wasn’t a referendum on data centers. “It wasn’t if there was going to be a moratorium,” he added.
The proposition, should it have passed, would not have affected the existing data center, which is set to be completed next year.
Rather, it would have applied to all future construction projects that met a criteria of scale. For instance, a new gas station wouldn’t have qualified, but a new large data center would be subject to independent assessments and mandatory public hearings.
Swartz said the measure was necessary because people in town were “blindsided” by how quickly the current data center was approved.
“Many in town didn’t even know what that was or meant,” he said. “Yet it only took 21 days from the time it was announced to the time construction began.”
Hankey, who said he signed a non-disclosure agreement with Applied Digital, the company building the data center, described the decision as one he and the city council had to make quickly, lest neighboring Fargo got the contract first.
“I don’t regret signing it,” he said of the NDA. “Had I not, that data center would almost certainly be in the city of Fargo right now, without any kind of sales tax or property tax for our community.”
As major developers, including SpaceX, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, and others, seek new AI data centers to power their products, they’ve encountered stiff resistance at town halls and city councils across the United States. Americans worry about the environmental impact, about electric bills, or the water supply. Many just don’t like AI.
After a series of contentious city council meetings in Harwood, including one in which anti-data-center protesters were ejected by sheriffs, Coolidge said Swartz gathered enough signatures to formally put the proposition on the ballot.
Voters ultimately shot it down, Swartz and Coolidge said, in part because people in town disagreed with whether the measure would also apply to smaller buildings and businesses, rather than just large ones.
Applied Digital did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
“It’s all about money,” Coolidge said. “They could give a rip about us as citizens.”
