The November 6 election day is fast approaching, and in D.C., you can cast a ballot even sooner than that—early voting begins on October 22 at these locations and lasts through November 2. Remember: D.C. has same-day voter registration. You can take a look at your sample ballot to get familiar with your options, and below we’ve provided more context for the decisions you’ll make for D.C. government.

MAYOR

Mayor Muriel Bowser is well positioned to become the first D.C. mayor to win a second term since 2002. She’s raised $2.5 million, a huge sum in a race with limited competition.

She faces Green Party challenger Ann Wilcox, who most recently ran for an At-large spot on the D.C. Council in 2012 and garnered 6 percent of the vote. Wilcox was a Ward 2 Board of Education member from 1994-1998, according to the Green Party campaign website, and she’s a practicing attorney who defended Army Lt. Dan Choi after he was arrested in 2010 for protesting “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in front of the White House.

Also running against Bowser are “progressive independent” candidate Dustin Canter and Libertarian candidate Martin Moulton. Canter is a yoga teacher whose platform includes stopping what he calls the “real estate vultures” and promoting entrepreneurship, as well as increasing access to healthy foods across the city. You can read the others here.

Moulton is a libertarian who ran against Eleanor Holmes Norton in 2016 for a seat as D.C.’s congressional delegate, where he got 6 percent of the vote to Holmes’ 85 percent. He told D.C. Refined that he wants to tackle recent scandals in the city’s public schools, abolish all drug laws in the city, and legalize sex work.

Bowser’s first term was not without controversy. She dealt with a host of scandals, including two separate cases where officials in her administration (including the now-former chancellor of D.C. schools Antwan Wilson) skirted school lotteries to place their children in preferred institutions.

However, Bowser presides over a growing D.C. economy (despite high levels of inequality), with unemployment numbers down in every ward since she took office. She’s all-but-certain to sail to victory in a few weeks. —Natalie Delgadillo

D.C. ATTORNEY GENERAL

This is the second time that residents have the chance to elect D.C.’s attorney general, and Karl Racine, the man who inaugurated the role, is looking for four more years.

From the outset, he faced off with Mayor Muriel Bowser over just how much power the new office would have. Political observers suspected that Racine would use his time as AG as a springboard for his own shot at mayor, but he said last September that he would rather “build upon the work we’ve already done” by running for reelection this term. He faced no challengers in the Democratic primary, and won nearly 99 percent of the vote.

During his tenure, Racine beefed up the office’s consumer protection branch, focusing on issues like negligent landlords, unlawful house flippers, and notario fraud.

Like many Democratic attorneys general, Racine has also been filing and joining lawsuits against the Trump administration, including over family separation, protections for defrauded student loan borrowers, the Affordable Care Act, and many more. He and Maryland AG Brian Frosh are suing the president over claims he’s violating the Constitution’s anti-corruption clause, and the case has moved to the discovery process, where Racine will try to make the business records public.

But he’s not the only person on the ballot. Joe Henchman, the chair of the D.C. Libertarian Party, has entered the race, and says that, while he respects Racine’s work, he would differ as AG in two key ways. He would use the Consumer Protection division to pursue action against WMATA, as well as direct the office’s Public Advocacy division to fight “NIMBY opposition to affordable housing,” he says. He also says that, unlike Racine, he can promise that he won’t be running for mayor in four years.

“I’m fully aware that no one would take a bet on Mr. Racine not winning re-election,” Henchman says. “A minimum goal for me is making D.C. general elections non-automatic.” —Rachel Kurzius

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN

Despite a challenge from the left during the primary, in which both candidates sought the mantle of “proven progressive leader,” Council Chairman Phil Mendelson emerged with about two-thirds of the vote.

After he won, Mendelson reminded his supporters that they still had another election in November, though “we don’t anticipate it will take as much of our time, money, and energy” as the primary.

Indeed, Mendelson’s only competition this November comes from the Libertarian Party’s Ethan Bishop-Henchman (married to the aforementioned Joe Henchman, running for AG). Bishop-Henchman says that he’s largely running to make sure that it’s a contested election, and doesn’t have hopes of victory over the man who has held the gavel since 2012. His major objection to Mendelson is shepherding the repeal of Initiative 77, because he disagrees with the council overturning a policy directly approved by voters.

Mendelson, who boosted his progressive bona fides with his work on paid family leave and a number of other labor laws, frustrated lefties by leading the charge to repeal the measure to eliminate the tipped wage. Bishop-Henchman says that people have reached out to work on his campaign since then, but not enough to really tip the scales. —Rachel Kurzius

AT-LARGE COUNCILMEMBERS

Until a few months ago, pretty much every D.C. race in the general election seemed like it would be a somewhat sleepy affair. That changed in September, when Bowser—herself facing only nominal challengers — decided to throw her political weight into the At-large race, endorsing Ward 8 restaurant owner Dionne Reeder in an attempt to unseat Councilmember Elissa Silverman, an independent. The unusual move (past mayors have never endorsed challengers in Council races) hasn’t only given Reeder’s year-old campaign a needed financial boost (she was down to $2,000 in the bank before Bowser gave her the nod), but also turned the fight between Reeder and Silverman into a proxy for the mayor’s race that D.C. residents don’t have. Like Bowser? Reeder’s your woman. Think Bowser’s not doing the greatest job? Pick Silverman.

On the issues, the race has also become a referendum of sorts on the paid family leave law Silverman helped write three years ago. From when she first launched her campaign last October, Reeder has said that while she’s in favor of paid leave, she worries the new program, which is funded by a payroll tax on employers, could drive her out of business. Silverman counters that the program will actually do what many small employers like Reeder probably can’t do right now: provide their employees with paid time off for family and medical concerns. Initiative 77 has also become a point of disagreement. Reeder opposed it before voters approved it, and then flip-flopped on whether it should be repealed. Silverman also had concerns with the measure, but after voters approved it, she tried to replace a planned repeal with a compromise she said would satisfy concerns on both sides. It failed to gain steam, and Initiative 77 was repealed.

Reeder also says Silverman is too divisive a legislator, treating business owners and developers like the enemy, a charge that Silverman rejects. She adds that, if elected, Reeder would be beholden to Bowser. Reeder says that’s not true. But what is clear is that Bowser and the city’s business community want Silverman gone. Before they jumped aboard with Reeder, they tried to boost S. Kathryn Allen, a former D.C. government official. But her business-funded campaign imploded when it was revealed that her nominating petitions to get on the ballot were rife with fraud and forged signatures. Silverman says Bowser just doesn’t like aggressive oversight. The mayor did point out Silverman’s forceful questioning of her agency heads at a recent fundraiser for Reeder.

Of course, this isn’t just a two-woman race. In fact, it’s a six-person race for the two At-large seats. Incumbent Councilmember Anita Bonds won June’s Democratic primary, and it’s all but assumed that she’ll cruise to another term. (Bowser is also backing her.) And then there are other candidates: Republican Ralph Chittams, Statehood Green David Schwartzman, and independent Rustin Lewis.

Chittams thinks the Council needs more ideological diversity, and presents himself as a candidate who would engage in aggressive oversight and slim down the government bureaucracy (“If we simply enforced what we currently have on the books now, we would solve all our problems,” he said at a recent debate). He says the city needs to focus on family-sized affordable housing and build municipal parking lots for residents who want to drive when they go out. Schwartzman—who runs for something just about every election cycle—is an unabashed critic of capitalism, saying D.C. should build more European-style public housing, hike taxes on the richest to pay for social services, and impose a congestion charge downtown to help fund public transit. Lewis is more in the middle, pledging to focus on equity in housing, jobs, and education.

As a voter, you have two votes to use them however you choose. While D.C. does set aside two At-large seats for non-Democrat candidates, the requirement doesn’t go the other way: two independents could win in November, if that’s what voters want. So if you really like Silverman and Chittams, or Reeder and Schwartzman, you can vote that way. The combination of votes are yours to make. —Martin Austermuhle

WARD 1 COUNCILMEMBER

D.C.’s smallest, densest ward was home to one of the few competitive primaries in June. The incumbent, Brianne Nadeau, faced three primary challengers in her first campaign for re-election. She decisively defeated them, with 48 percent of the vote (Nadeau’s next closest competitor, Kent Boese, came in at 25 percent.)

Jamie Sycamore initially planned to challenge Nadeau in the primary, before withdrawing and changing his party affiliation to pursue an independent candidacy in the general election. “I didn’t want the general election to be a coronation,” he explains.

As was the case with Nadeau’s primary opponents, Sycamore has focused his criticisms more on the councilmember’s constituent relations rather than specific policy disagreements. Sycamore says he has “felt very dismissed” when talking to Nadeau, and that he has spoken to other people who described similar experiences.

Nadeau bats away the criticism that she isn’t doing enough for constituents. “I had three opponents in the primary. They were all saying exactly the same thing and they all lost by a lot. … I don’t think its a message that resonates with voters,” she says, adding that her office has served more than 5,000 people during her first term. “If you don’t have a satisfactory experience with me or my office, I want to know about it. But we don’t hear a lot of that; we hear a lot of great feedback.”

Through the October 10 filing deadline, Sycamore has raised $10,000, a fraction of Nadeau’s total of $260,000.

In her first term in office, Nadeau has introduced legislation aimed at helping longtime D.C. businesses stay in place as rents rise, making the city’s immigrant services fund permanent, giving baby boxes to new D.C. parents, offering protections to women who have survived abuse during divorce proceedings, and refining emergency homelessness services, among others. She was one of five councilmembers who voted against overturning the tipped minimum wage ballot initiative that voters passed earlier this year. Should she win reelection, Nadeau says she plans to continue to focus on affordable housing and education issues.

Sycamore says he is a “disabilities advocate, LGBTQ activist, husband, and doggie daddy.” The 31-year-old is billing himself as a “progressive independent.” In addition to his dissatisfaction with Nadeau’s constituent services, Sycamore says he is running because he wanted to take action in the wake of Trump’s election and because he believes that the D.C. Council should have representation from the LGBTQ community. He describes his top three priorities as equity, responsiveness, and affordable housing and living. —Rachel Sadon

WARD 3 COUNCILMEMBER

For as politically engaged as Ward 3 residents are—turnout in the 2016 presidential election was 75 percent, the highest in the city — they seem to be pleasantly satisfied with Mary Cheh, the three-term incumbent who faced no challenger in the June primary. In her time on the Council, she’s focused on everything from healthy school meals to modernizing the taxicab industry and legalizing Uber; she led an investigation into contracting scandals during Bowser’s term; and was the only legislator to openly support Initiative 77 this year. But her challenger, independent Petar Dimtchev, says that for all the good work she has done—he singles out her work on the environment—Cheh has strayed from her local roots. “With politicians who have been in office for a long time, they develop a sense of entitlement and forget why they’re there,” he says. Dimtchev, an immigrant from Bulgaria who came to D.C. as a young child, says he’ll focus on improving the ward’s infrastructure, address overcrowded schools and work to revitalize the commercial corridors in Glover Park and Cleveland Park. And he says tackle those challenges with the urgency of former mayor Adrian Fenty, who he worked for as a Ward 3 coordinator. If actual issues aren’t your thing, consider this: Cheh got a D.C. flag tattooed on her foot as part of a bet, while Dimtchev, an attorney by trade, moonlights as a DJ in local venues. —Martin Austermuhle

WARD 5 COUNCILMEMBER

Democratic incumbent Kenyan McDuffie describes himself as a “champion for Ward 5,” pointing to his work on criminal justice reform (the wide-ranging NEAR Act, passage of D.C.’s body-worn camera policy, barring landlords from asking about a potential tenant’s criminal history off the bat, extending the right to an attorney to landlord-tenant court among them) and his support for small business along corridors like New York Ave., North Capitol, and Rhode Island Avenue.

But two of his opponents disagree (surprise!). Independent Kathy Henderson, a longtime and controversial ANC commissioner in Ward 5, says that the legislation McDuffie has passed is “ridiculous … he seems like a nice guy but he’s not a fighter.” Henderson has run for, and lost, the Ward 5 seat before, but “I didn’t receive the level of support I’m hearing now,” she says.

McDuffie points to changes in the ward like the renovated Woodridge Library, the forthcoming update to the Edgewood Recreation Center, and $20 million toward rennovating Fort Lincoln Cultural Center and park as proof of his advocacy for his constituents.

Both Henderson and Green Statehood candidate Joyce Robinson-Paul take issue with McDuffie’s efforts to regulate home-sharing and short-term rentals. Robinson-Paul says that cutting down on Airbnb in D.C. will hurt seniors in Ward 5, who rely on the extra cash to pay their rising property taxes.

But McDuffie says that is a misunderstanding of the bill, which “lays out a sensible and fair regulatory framework … [and] allows seniors who live in their homes to be able to share their homes. If you live in your home, you can rent out one, two, or 10 rooms.”

Robinson-Paul, a former ANC commissioner and longtime community organizer who has previously run for the shadow delegation, also raised concerns with McDuffie’s vote to exempt renters from the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act and the fact that important council hearings, like that on Initiative 77 and the Comprehensive Plan, have stretched into the early hours of the morning.

“I would be pleased not to run, to tell you the truth,” says Robinson-Paul. “But we ought to have people who listen in our city without us having to stay out ’til 3 in the morning.”

The fourth candidate, Amone Banks, did not respond to requests for comment.

Of the four candidates on the ballot for Ward 5, McDuffie appears to be the only one who has filed fundraising information by the October 10 deadline. He has raised a total of $250,000. —Rachel Kurzius

WARD 6 COUNCILMEMBER

Incumbent Charles Allen, a Democrat, faces off against Republican candidate Michael Bekesha. Allen’s first term has been devoid of any serious controversy or scandal, and he’s become known as a generally progressive voice on the dais. Among his most notable actions this term is the passage of the Youth Rehabilitation Amendment Act, a bill he wrote and introduced after a 2016 Washington Post exposé revealed that the 1985 Youth Rehabilitation Act was helping erase the criminal records of young people who went on to reoffend, sometimes with violent crimes. He has also focused on elections, passing public financing of campaigns and introducing legislation that would allow teens to vote.

Bekesha, for his part, says he has often felt that Allen and the other members of the Council haven’t been an effective oversight mechanism for the executive branch, or for one another. He points to the graduation scandal at Ballou High School earlier this year, where he says councilmembers were soft on the mayor’s office. He says that because he is a Republican voice, he would be more willing to disagree with councilmembers and the mayor’s office. (One instance he raised is what he views as the largely lax response to Ward 8’s Trayon White after he said on a video that a prominent family controlled the weather.) He also feels that the Council spends too much money on Events DC, a quasi-governmental sports and events agency.

In terms of his disagreements specifically with Allen, Bekesha says he would have voted in favor of repealing Initiative 77, whereas Allen voted against, citing concerns about going against the will of the people who approved the measure (the initiative was ultimately repealed). Allen has also voted to advance a bill that would regulate Airbnb in the District, which Bekesha disagrees with (the final vote won’t happen until after the election).

Bekesha considers himself to be an “urban” Republican, which he says means that he is socially progressive but fiscally conservative. Bekesha is an attorney at Judicial Watch, a conservative organization that has been involved in suing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. You can read more about him here.

Given that Ward 6 has Ward 6 has 55,417 registered Democrats and 7,307 registered Republicans, Allen is generally considered a favorite in the race. —Natalie Delgadillo

STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION

Our colleagues at WAMU have an excellent, comprehensive guide to the candidates in these races.

This post has been updated to clarify that Joyce Robinson-Paul is a former ANC commissioner.