Harwood, North Dakota, became an outlier in a national backlash against data centers after voters rejected a measure that would have required tougher review of large future developments. The tally was decisive: 325 votes against and 105 in favor, making the town the only pro-data-center result among 45 related ballot measures tracked nationally.¹

The dispute began with Applied Digital’s 160-acre AI data-center project, built for Oracle as end user. Residents said they learned of it only weeks before construction began in September 2025; Mayor Blake Hankey and then-Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney had signed nondisclosure agreements with the developer months earlier.² For opponents, that speed was the point. Advocate Mike Swartz said residents had been “blindsided,” while his wife, Amanda, said, “People deserve a say in projects of this scope.”²

Swartz and the grassroots group Voices of Harwood responded with a proposed Home Rule Charter amendment. It would not have stopped the project already underway, but would have required independent assessments and public hearings for future developments meeting a high threshold of scale.¹ Backers worried about noise near an elementary school, as well as the precedent set by a campus that could eventually grow to 900 acres.²

Town leaders cast the proposal differently. Hankey said its language reached beyond data centers to any sufficiently large business and that its requirements “would have been financially burdensome to a city our size.”¹ He defended signing the NDA, arguing Harwood would otherwise have lost the project—and its tax proceeds—to Fargo.¹

That economic argument carried the day. Officials projected $1.65 million in data-center taxes by 2028, while opponents of the amendment warned of added municipal costs and lost development.² Swartz said squeezed household budgets made voters wary of anything that might raise assessments. Harwood did not settle its argument over the data center; it chose, for now, the promise of revenue over stronger public control.