Harwood Votes 325-105 to Clear Applied Digital's $3B Data Center

By a vote of 325 to 105, Harwood, North Dakota, a town of 845 people, chose not to tighten oversight of industrial development, clearing the path for Applied Digital's $3 billion Polaris Forge 2 campus already under construction at its edge. The vote made Harwood the lone outlier of the night: The Washington Post reports that Ballotpedia tracked 41 local data-center ballot measures across 10 states last Tuesday, and voters sided with measures limiting or expressing opposition to data center development in 40 of them.

The measure, labeled Article X, was drafted by a residents' group called Voices of Harwood that organized in response to how the city handled the Applied Digital proposal. Harwood's city council approved the project in September 2025 over strong objections from residents; the amendment would have required independent reviews and public hearings for major industrial projects.

Mayor Blake Hankey has been direct about the trade. "If the data center is going to get put in this similar location, we might as well get the tax benefits and the tax revenue from it," Hankey said. He has estimated the finished campus will net Harwood about $1.65 million a year in property taxes, roughly six times what the town collected in 2024, and employ about 200 people once fully operational.

The Polaris Forge 2 project is a 280-megawatt AI campus on the edge of town. The council had already green-lit it last fall; Tuesday's ballot was effectively about whether the next project of its kind would face a slower path through.