‘Like being hit between the eyes with a sledgehammer’: Meet the one town in America that defied election trends and voted in favor of data centers

Detailed summary

Harwood, North Dakota residents voted against an initiative calling for a slowdown in industrial developments like AI data centers.

In a midterm election punctuated by America’s overwhelming distaste for data centers, one small town in North Dakota has bucked the trend.

Of the 45 ballot measures on data centers this past election, only one went the pro-data center way, according to data from Redbud Consulting. That initiative belonged to Harwood, a North Dakota town 10 miles from Fargo and home to about 940 people, which overwhelmingly voted against a ballot measure that would place limitations on large-scale industrial developments such as data centers.

Data centers were a major flashpoint of the midterm elections. With a new wave of moratoriums and restrictions, AI companies like OpenAI are scrambling to rebrand the buildout and market construction alongside promises of perks and community benefits to woo both local governments and residents.

The Harwood initiative proposed an amendment to the town’s Home Rule…

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