A map showing all the ANCs in the District by Image from Openanc.org.

This election year, there were many people interested in running for an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner seat, as evident by GGWash’s most recent training. But even if you were keen on running, getting up-to-date information about open ANC seats can be a challenge — enter OpenANC.

Why OpenANC was created

As the ANC election season ramped up, I started to see that there were some barriers to participation in these elections, both for candidates and voters.

There was no searchable, zoomable map of all of the districts that combined the name of the district, the name of the commissioner, and the names of the candidates. When someone announced their candidacy, it wasn’t clear where they were running and who they were running against, if anyone.

I had heard that many ANC races had zero candidates, but it wasn’t clear where the open seats were. And even the official list of candidates isn’t complete because some races are won by write-in candidates.

There are other sites that publish data about candidates across the United States, like Openstates and Ballotpedia. But those projects only go to the state legislative level (for instance, both have DC Council information) and don’t gather information about lower levels of the ballot.

As a freelance data science consultant, who’s worked on political campaigns and party committees, I wanted to make a simple website for ANCs.

With OpenANC you can access a map that is updated daily with a list of commissioners and candidates. As you walk around the city, you can open a map of ANC districts on a mobile device, see where your little blue dot is, and see which ANC commissioner represents that spot.

Each single member district (SMD) has an inscrutable 4-character code. To make the districts more memorable, I’ve started gathering landmarks in each SMD. Did you know that Nationals Park is in 6D02, El Sol Restaurante is in 2F07, and Black Lives Matter Plaza is in 2B05?

The data is free or anyone to use for their own informational, non-commercial purposes. The data is published on Google Sheets every time I update the site.

I plan to maintain OpenANC as an ongoing service past this election. It currently costs me zero dollars to host and maintain, and just takes a few minutes a day to update with the latest list of candidates. I hope to make OpenANC a truly open source project where others can contribute. Other ANC directories are inaccurate or out of date, so I want OpenANC to be responsive to the needs of candidates and voters by making changes as they happen.

The need for more information on ANCs

Finally, I’m mindful of the fact that OpenANC is the sort of thing that the DC government could do in-house. All I’m doing is repackaging data from the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and the DC Board of Elections.

I’m glad that Councilmember Robert White (at-large) secured more funding for ANCs in the Fiscal Year 2021 budget.

The more the ANC system is run by volunteers on shoestring budgets, the more it perpetuates the privilege of those with enough free time to participate.

A study by Boston University researchers gathered data about who speaks at zoning meetings in the Boston metro area. Their conclusion:

We find that individuals who are older, male, longtime residents, voters in local elections, and homeowners are significantly more likely to participate in these meetings. These individuals overwhelmingly (and to a much greater degree than the general public) oppose new housing construction. These participatory inequalities have important policy implications and may be contributing to rising housing costs.

We need more people participating in local politics and I started OpenANC to lower one of the barriers to participation.

There are just two days left before the filing deadline which is Wednesday, August 5 (if you miss the filing deadline, it’s still possible to run as a write-in). Head to OpenANC to find your district. Check out other neighborhoods with uncontested races. If you know someone who lives there, encourage them to run. Follow the project at @OpenANC on Twitter for updates as we make the site better.

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Tagged: advisory neighborhood commissioner, anc, politics

Devin Brady is a data scientist who works in politics and tech. You can often find him on a bus or a bike, wondering how to make cities work better for everyone. He lives in Adams Morgan.