The short version.
Washington, DC has the lowest barrier to elected office anywhere in the United States, and almost nobody writes about it. Forget the Mayor for a moment. The District is divided into 345 Advisory Neighborhood Commission single-member districts of roughly 2,000 residents each, every one of them on the ballot every two years. To get your name printed on that ballot you need 25 signatures from neighbours in your own single-member district. There is no filing fee, no party, no pre-registration with campaign finance, and no money involved at all.
The comparison is the whole story. Running for Mayor of the District takes 3,000 valid signatures. Running for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner takes 25. That is a ratio of 120 to 1 for two offices on the same ballot, in the same city, on the same day.
This is a plain-language overview, not legal advice. The District of Columbia Board of Elections is the final word on every deadline, form and signature count below.
The campaigns that win the field are the ones who start building their list of supporters and volunteers before qualifying even opens, not after. Motion51 is ready to load your voter file the moment you're set up, so you can start finding your people now.
About 1 in 7 seats drew no candidate at all.
Filing for the November 3, 2026 general election closed at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, August 5, 2026. DCBOE published its official list of Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner candidates three days later. Counted entry by entry, about one in seven of the 345 single-member districts has nobody on it: roughly 45 carry no name whatsoever, and a further handful show someone who picked up nominating petitions and never filed them.
- Roughly 45 of the 345 single-member districts have a completely blank entry on the official candidate list as published on August 8, 2026.
- About seven more list a person who collected petitions but has no filing date recorded against their name.
- ANC 6E, in the NoMa and Mount Vernon Triangle area, has five of its nine single-member districts empty, which puts its ability to reach a quorum in question.
- These are approximate figures, deliberately. They come from a hand count of a 19-page list, and the ten-day petition challenge period ran from August 8 to August 17, 2026. Check the current list with DCBOE before relying on any specific district.
Counts taken from the DCBOE List of Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Candidates as published on August 8, 2026, after the August 5 filing deadline. Figures are approximate on purpose.
The deadline has passed. Here is the door that is still open.
The District requires no pre-registration to be a write-in candidate. Nobody has to approve you, you file nothing before election day, and every ballot carries write-in lines. What you file is an Affirmation of Write-In Candidacy, and DCBOE takes it on or before the seventh day AFTER the election. For the November 3, 2026 general election that is 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, a full week after the votes are cast.
- No pre-registration. You do not have to tell anyone you are running before election day.
- The Affirmation of Write-In Candidacy is due on or before the seventh day after a general or special election, and on or before the third day after a primary.
- In a single-member district where nobody is on the ballot, a write-in campaign is not a long shot. It is the only path, and the winning number is measured in dozens of votes, not thousands.
- DCBOE also publishes an optional list of write-in candidates before the election, so a campaign that wants to be visible can be.
Who can run for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner.
D.C. Code s 1-309.05(a)(1) is the entire list. There is nothing else.
- You are a registered qualified elector actually living in the single-member district you want to represent.
- You have lived in that district continuously for the 60 days immediately before you file your nominating petitions.
- You hold no other elected public office, which for this purpose means Mayor, Chairman or member of the Council, member of the State Board of Education, or the Delegate.
- You have not been convicted of a felony committed while serving as a Commissioner, with the Central Detention Facility district carved out.
That is all of it. No age floor beyond voter eligibility, no party, no fee, no financial disclosure to get on the ballot, and no campaign-finance registration to start. DCBOE states it directly: there is no registration requirement, and the Office of Campaign Finance registers ANC candidates from the list the Board provides.
One provision nobody writes about, and it is real. D.C. Code s 1-309.05(a)(1)(D) and (b)(5) carve out the single-member district containing the Central Detention Facility and the Correctional Treatment Facility. People in the custody of the Department of Corrections may run for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner there, the felony disqualification that applies elsewhere does not reach them, and the Department is required to distribute educational materials and to facilitate petition circulation inside the facility. It is the only place in the statute where the District tells an agency to help people on the inside get on a ballot.
Every office you can run for in the District.
Every elected office in the District is filled by nominating petition. There is no filing fee for any of them. The only fee anywhere in DCBOE candidate materials is $10 for a large-format printed map.
| Office | Seats | Term | Signatures for the general election | On the Tuesday, November 3, 2026 ballot? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Nonpartisan |
345 | 2 years | 25 signatures from registered voters in your own single-member district | Yes, all 345 |
| Mayor Partisan |
1 | 4 years | 3,000 signatures, or 1.5% of all registered voters, whichever is less Primary: 2,000 signatures, or 1% of registered voters in your party, whichever is less |
Yes |
| Chairman of the Council Partisan |
1 | 4 years | 3,000 signatures, or 1.5% of all registered voters, whichever is less Primary: 2,000 signatures, or 1% of registered voters in your party, whichever is less |
Yes |
| At-large Member of the Council Partisan |
4 in total, staggered | 4 years | 3,000 signatures, or 1.5% of all registered voters, whichever is less Primary: 2,000 signatures, or 1% of registered voters in your party, whichever is less |
Yes, 2 seats |
| Ward Member of the Council Partisan |
8, one per ward | 4 years | 500 signatures from registered voters in your own ward Primary: 250 signatures, or 1% of registered voters in your party in your ward, whichever is less |
Yes, Wards 1, 3, 5 and 6 |
| Attorney General Partisan |
1 | 4 years | 3,000 signatures, or 1.5% of all registered voters, whichever is less Primary: 2,000 signatures, or 1% of registered voters in your party, whichever is less |
Yes |
| Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives Partisan |
1 | 2 years | 3,000 signatures, or 1.5% of all registered voters, whichever is less Primary: 2,000 signatures, or 1% of registered voters in your party, whichever is less |
Yes |
| State Board of Education, ward seat Nonpartisan |
8, one per ward | 4 years | 200 signatures from registered voters in your own ward | Yes, Wards 1, 3, 5 and 6 |
| State Board of Education, at-large seat Nonpartisan |
1 | 4 years | 1,000 signatures from registered voters | NO, this is a presidential-year seat and it is next up in 2028 |
| Statehood "shadow" U.S. Senator Partisan |
2, staggered | 6 years | 3,000 signatures, or 1.5% of all registered voters, whichever is less Primary: 2,000 signatures, or 1% of registered voters in your party, whichever is less |
Yes, 1 seat |
| Statehood "shadow" U.S. Representative Partisan |
1 | 2 years | 3,000 signatures, or 1.5% of all registered voters, whichever is less Primary: 2,000 signatures, or 1% of registered voters in your party, whichever is less |
Yes |
What is next, in 2028
The next full cycle is 2028. It carries Council Wards 2, 4, 7 and 8, two at-large Council seats, State Board of Education Wards 2, 4, 7 and 8 plus the at-large board seat, the Delegate, the statehood seats on their own rotation, and all 345 Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats again. Petitions for the ANC seats become available 120 days before that election and are due 90 days before it, which is the rule that produced the July 6 and August 5 dates in 2026.
How the District is actually organised.
The District of Columbia is a single county-equivalent that is coextensive with the city. It contains no counties and no towns, so there is no county board, no county clerk and no county commission to run for. Everything below the Council is neighbourhood-scale.
- 8 wards, redrawn after each census, each electing one Councilmember and one State Board of Education member.
- 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, each covering a group of neighbourhoods.
- 345 single-member districts, each of about 2,000 residents, each electing one Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner. These boundaries took effect on January 1, 2023 under the Advisory Neighborhood Commission Boundaries Act of 2022. Any source quoting 296 single-member districts is describing the retired 2013 map.
- 143 voting precincts, which are an election-administration geography and do not line up with the commissions.
- The District also has 46 Neighborhood Clusters. That number matching the 46 commissions is a coincidence. Clusters are a planning geography, they are not commissions, and they do not nest inside them.
- One Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, who may sit on committees and speak but may not vote on final passage on the House floor, plus two statehood "shadow" senators and one statehood "shadow" representative, who are District offices created to lobby for statehood and are not seats in Congress.
The 2026 District election calendar.
- Tuesday, June 16, 2026Primary election, plus a special election for one at-large Council seat. Both have happened.
- Monday, July 6, 2026ANC nominating petitions became available, 120 days before the election.
- Wednesday, August 5, 2026, 5:00 p.m.Filing deadline for EVERY office, party and independent alike. Closed.
- August 8 to 17, 2026Ten-day petition challenge period.
- Thursday, September 10, 2026Last day to withdraw and keep your name off the printed ballot.
- October 26 to November 1, 2026Early voting.
- Tuesday, November 3, 2026General election.
- Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 5:00 p.m.Affirmation of Write-In Candidacy due, seven days after the election.
- Wednesday, December 2, 2026Certification.
Dates come from DCBOE's published 2026 calendars and from the District election code. Confirm any deadline with the Board before you rely on it.
Getting the DC voter file, which is the easiest in the country.
The District gives the voter roll to anyone who asks. Not to candidates, not to parties, not to approved categories of requester. Anyone. 3 DCMR s 510.1 puts it in one sentence: "Upon written request, the Board shall provide to any person a list of the registered qualified electors of the District of Columbia or any ward, precinct or ANC SMD therein." Section 510.2 then allows the Board to furnish selective lists by party affiliation, date of registration, ward, precinct, ANC single-member district or voter history.
- The request form is one page. It asks for no purpose, no eligibility category and no certification, and it has a checkbox for the list with vote history.
- Delivery is by email or secure link as a Microsoft Excel file, marked "No Charge" on the form itself. The file with vote history is free.
- You can ask for the whole District or for a single ANC single-member district, which for an ANC race is about 2,000 residents.
- DCBOE emails ANC vacancy candidates a link to the registered voters in their single-member district after they pick up their petitions, and its own petition handout tells candidates to check each signature they collect against that list.
- There is no use restriction to comply with. The provision that once sat at D.C. Code s 1-1001.07(h)(2A) now reads simply "Repealed", and s 1-1001.14, the corrupt election practices section, creates no offence for using the roll.
Bring us your voter file
Bring us your DC voter file and Motion51 will load it, cut it into walkable turf and put it on an app your volunteers use at the door. For an Advisory Neighborhood Commission race that is a few thousand people, a free spreadsheet from the Board, and a campaign you can genuinely finish knocking. We do not sell you the data and we do not need to: the District already gives it to you.
This is a plain-language summary of published rules, not legal advice. Check the current form and rules with DCBOE before you rely on anything here.
The District of Columbia Board of Elections.
This is where you file, where you pick up nominating petitions, and where you request the voter list. It is the source of truth for every deadline on this page.
- Office
- 1015 Half Street SE, Suite 750, Washington, DC 20003
- Phone
- (202) 727-2525
- Hours
- Monday to Friday, 8:15 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
- Website
- https://dcboe.org/
Official sources
Common questions.
How many signatures do you need to run for ANC in DC?
25. D.C. Code s 1-309.05(b)(1)(B) requires a nominating petition signed by not less than 25 registered qualified electors who live in the same single-member district as the candidate. There is no filing fee.
How much does it cost to run for office in Washington, DC?
Nothing. The District has no filing fee for any elected office. Ballot access is by nominating petition only. The only fee in DCBOE candidate materials is $10 for a large-format printed map, which is optional.
How many ANC seats are there in DC?
There are 345 single-member districts across 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, each single-member district holding about 2,000 residents. That count took effect on January 1, 2023. Older sources say 296, which was the 2013 map and is out of date by 49 seats.
Is it too late to run for office in DC in 2026?
The petition deadline was 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, August 5, 2026 and it has passed for every office. The write-in route is still open, and unusually so: the District requires no pre-registration to be written in, and the Affirmation of Write-In Candidacy is not due until 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, seven days after the election.
Which offices are on the DC ballot on November 3, 2026?
Mayor, Chairman of the Council, two at-large Council seats, Council members for Wards 1, 3, 5 and 6, Attorney General, Delegate to the U.S. House, one statehood senator, the statehood representative, State Board of Education members for Wards 1, 3, 5 and 6, and all 345 Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats. The at-large State Board of Education seat is a presidential-year office and is not on this ballot.
Does DC have counties?
No. The District of Columbia is a single county-equivalent coextensive with the city and contains no counties and no county subdivisions. Its sub-jurisdictions are 8 wards, 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and 345 single-member districts.
How do I get the DC voter file?
Send DCBOE a written request using its data request form. 3 DCMR s 510.1 requires the Board to provide a list of registered qualified electors, for the District or for any ward, precinct or ANC single-member district, to any person on written request. The form asks for no purpose and no certification, the version with vote history is free, and delivery is by email or secure link.
Can you run for ANC while in DC Department of Corrections custody?
Yes, in the single-member district containing the Central Detention Facility and the Correctional Treatment Facility. D.C. Code s 1-309.05(a)(1)(D) carves that district out of the felony disqualification, and s 1-309.05(b)(5) requires the Department of Corrections to distribute voter education materials and to facilitate petition circulation inside the facility.
After you qualify: the field operation.
The paperwork side of running ends the day you file, or in the District's case the day you decide to be written in. What starts then is the campaign: knocking doors, recruiting neighbours and finding the people who will actually turn out. An ANC single-member district is roughly 2,000 residents, which is small enough that a determined candidate can reach every door that matters. That is exactly the size of race the District makes easy and almost nobody runs properly.