Data Center Boom Hits a Voter Revolt, but Harwood Shows the Fight Is Messier
Data Center Boom Hits a Voter Revolt, but Harwood Shows the Fight Is Messier
Before Election Day, the AI infrastructure boom had already put communities on edge over electricity, water, tax breaks and opaque development deals. In Harwood, a town of roughly 940 in North Dakota, those anxieties were especially immediate: a $3 billion data center was rising nearby after an approval process residents said moved with startling speed.
A proposed charter amendment would have required added scrutiny, including public hearings and independent assessments, for future large projects. Supporters said it was a bid to regain a voice after residents were “blindsided” by the existing project. Mayor Blake Hankey opposed it, arguing the language reached beyond data centers and “would have been financially burdensome to a city our size.”
On Tuesday, Harwood rejected the measure, 325 votes to 105 — the conspicuous exception to a national pattern. Different election trackers counted slightly different slates of local questions, but each found a decisive revolt: one review identified 41 measures in 10 states and said voters sided against data centers in all but Harwood, while another counted 45 propositions, with 44 landing on the restriction side. Voters in at least 29 jurisdictions approved bans or limits, a result framed as widening resistance to the AI industry’s footprint.
The backlash also reached statewide politics. In Ohio, where 21 local measures appeared on ballots, Democrat Amy Acton won the governorship after backing a conditional moratorium requiring developers to cover utility costs and use union labor. Texas and other emerging data-center states saw candidates pressed to promise guardrails, even where they did not embrace outright bans.
By the aftermath, the industry’s answer was not retreat but recalibration. Developers and tech giants began offering infrastructure payments, power commitments, environmental terms and community benefits — while recasting data centers as “compute campuses.” OpenAI’s Chris Lehane argued that “smart, talented folks take messages from voters and react and respond to them.”
Critics want binding rules, not a rebrand. Rep. Greg Casar called the ballot revolt an “early tremor” of a larger political earthquake and demanded AI executives testify under oath. The election did not halt the buildout; it made local consent, and who pays for it, the central fight.
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