During ANC 2A’s second special November meeting on Monday, November 6th, ANC 2A voted to name Courtney Cooperman and Chris Labas, two West End residents, as the ANC’s two designated community representatives to the Community Advisory Team (CAT) for The Aston. The ANC arrived at this decision through a ranked choice voting process using the online software RankedVote.co.
In late September ANC 2A opened an online form for community members to apply to serve as one of the ANC’s two CAT representatives. The ANC received 12 applications through the form. Then, at the November 6th meeting, the ANC collected paper ballots from the seven attending commissioners which ranked each commissioner’s preferences (1st choice, 2nd choice, 3rd choice, etc.) among the 12 applicants. Scans of those paper ballots can be found here. The paper ballots were entered into the online software and after initial rounds of ranked choice voting Courtney Cooperman was named as the leading representative to serve on the CAT. Then, after additional rounds of ranked choice voting, where Ms. Cooperman was removed from commissioners’ ballots, Chris Labas was named as the second representative to serve on the CAT.
ANC 2A has communicated the selection of Ms. Cooperman and Mr. Labas to the Mayor’s Office and Councilmember Brooke Pinto’s Office. They will join the ANC 2A Chair and 2A06 Commissioner, who were individually named as CAT representatives as part of the agreement that created the CAT. The ANC thanks all of the candidates who applied to serve on the CAT.
ANC 2A believes that this was the first official use of ranked choice voting by the DC Government and that its use could provide further benefits for future ANC work.