In case you didn’t hear, NYC local primaries were held on Tuesday. Maybe you were indulging in the latest news on Jeremiah Wright, or perhaps sympathizing with our new friends out in Red Hook. But I would put money down that if you were visiting Hayden or U-Hall, then you were more likely ducking in from the rain rather than casting a vote.

The November ballot will feature not only the obvious presidential contest but a whole gamut of elected officials. I remember viewing my first ballot back in November 2006 and realizing how arbitrary many of my choices were once I got passed the top executive and legislative state and federal positions. Hopefully some of the links here will help out this time around.

The candidates for the often lesser-known elected positions faced off this week in what was far from a Super Tuesday. A Brooklyn blogger recalls a local primary with less than 3% turnout, and some predict that the contests this week could be won by margins of a few hundred votes. The local primaries are often criticized for lack of competition, ballot-bumping, and general confusion due to the exhaustive nomination and voting procedures.

New York City’s municipal governance is a labyrinth, to say the least, and there is no immediate, accessible resource to get all the necessary information. Furthermore, strict election and voting policies don’t offer much help to the new voter – if you want to be able to vote in next year’s local primary, then you’ll need to have your party registration in by October 10 this year.

I tried starting with the NYC Board of Elections to see what contests were going on in the NYU area. Through their poll site locator I was able to find our political districts (Election: 045, Assembly: 66, Congress: 08, Council: 01, Civil Court: 01, Senatorial: 29) and nearest voting site. That was about it. To find the list of candidates for those respective areas, the Board of Elections site only offers a 74-page PDF with no table of contents. The Municipal Art Society does provide a helpful map portal through their Community Information Technology Initiative, but the best coverage I found on local elections was the Gotham Gazette. The Times offered a general overview, a good start, but no extended coverage. The Board of Elections will be confirming the results from Tuesday throughout the coming weeks, but for a preview, the Gazette has already published unofficial results.

I’m usually of the opinion that as great as the web is, a simple phone call (with some patience) is usually the best bet for information like this. Unfortunately, after listening to five minutes of automation to discover that 212-VOTE-NYC is still listing 2007 voting dates, and not being able to get through to an actual person, I’d say we’re left to piece things together.

Photo by Brad Powell