On Tuesday, Virginia will hold it’s biennial state and local elections. As I’ve written about before, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the preponderance of important government decisions made by your elected officials each year are concentrated at the local or state level. If you have kids, I’m positive this is true: unless there is a depression or conscription, the school board, local government, and state government decisions over the public schools will be the most important for you and your family.

The problem, of course, is threefold: first, many people either don’t realize how important local government is, or they flat out disagree about its importance. Second, it’s more difficult to be even minimally knowledgeable about local politics than national politics in the run-up to an election, because it’s often not something you can pick up through osmosis in the last few frenzied weeks. Finally, there’s much less social pressure to vote in the local elections, so even people who vote religiously in the federal elections sometimes don’t pay attention to the local campaigns or issues.

All of this results in some people consciously deciding not to vote because “they don’t know anything about the candidates,” or “it’s not that important.” (This is further complicated in Virginia, because we have our state and local elections in the odd-numbered years. That’s theoretically good because the federal elections don’t overshadow the state elections, but it’s bad because turnout goes way down and the social pressure to vote evaporates.) I think it is a mistake to decline to vote for these reasons. And I think a lot of people overestimate how much time they will need to spend in order to cast a meaningful vote in a local election.

So if you weren’t planning to vote because you feel like you don’t know anything about the state or local issues in your area, let me offer you this: by the time you finish reading this first bullet point on this blog post, you’ll be more than ready to go vote, even if you don’t do any further research. And if you’re willing to read the rest of the blog post and then invest another 60 minutes of effort, I promise you’ll feel nearly as comfortable voting in the local elections as you do in the federal elections.

Let’s start with the fundamental tip:

1) It’s perfectly fine to use party affiliation as 100% of your knowledge. A lot of observers and intellectuals deride partisan voting, but if you don’t know much about the politics of an election it is absolutely the best shortcut available. That’s true for the federal elections, and it’s also true for the state and local elections. Yes, not ever person affiliated with a party agrees with the party all the time. And yes, state and local parties don’t perfectly match their national counterparts. But it’s close enough often enough that if you prefer one national party to another, it’s worth voting that way in state and local elections. And if you don’t even know what national party you like, just ask yourself this: would you prefer somewhat more (or somewhat better quality) public services in exchange for slightly higher taxes, or would you prefer somewhat fewer  (or somewhat worse quality) public services in exchange for slightly lower taxes. If it’s the former, vote for Democrats. If it’s the latter, vote for Republicans. That sounds absurdly simple. but it’s a close enough proxy most of the time in a local election to make your vote credible.

You now have no excuse: go to the polling place, pick all the candidates affiliated with your party, skip all the races that are contested non-partisan (more on that in a minute), read the bond issues and decide on the spot, and pat yourself on the back as you leave.

You can stop right now if you want. But here are four (ok, four and a half) more tips that take less than hour to implement and will really improve your confidence about local voting:

2) Understand the basic structure of  your governments. Where I live in Virginia — Fairfax county — we have a county Board of Supervisors that consists of 9 district representatives and a chairman elected by the whole county. The terms are four years and collectively appoint the county chief executive. We also have two elected executives — a commonwealth attorney and a sheriff, both elected county-wide on four-year terms. Finally, we have a school board, which has a representative from each of the same 9 districts, plus three at-large members elected county wide. All terms are four years. This is a pretty standard local structure: you either have a town or county board, plus a town or county executive, plus a school board and a few other elected executive officials.

As with many states, Virginia has a legislature with an assembly on a 2-year term and a Senate on a 4-year term, plus a governor, lieutenant governor, and an attorney general on 4-year terms. I learned all of this in less than 2 minutes by going to my county government website, where you can also learn the responsibilities of each office.

2a) Learn what offices are up for election this year. This information will usually be available on the same website that gives you the structural information about the local government. All you really need is the offices that are up and the list of candidates for each. In my case, the whole school board, the whole board of supervisors, both county elected executives, and the state assembly and senate offices are up this year.

3) If there’s a burning issue in your local community, figure out how you feel about it. If one exists, it will usually be pretty obvious. It might be property tax rates, it might be road conditions, it might be commercial zoning issues. It could really be anything. In northern Virginia, it’s traffic congestion. Once you’ve identified the issue, talk to a few people, think about how you feel about it, and then decide (a) if anything can be done about it; and (b) what that should be. And really pay attention to (a). Everyone from the dogcatcher on up to the governor says they are concerned about traffic in northern Virginia, but only some people can do anything about it. Everyone else is just selling you a bill of goods. Similarly, if there is a bond issue or other referendum on the ballot, read it ahead of time and, if you don’t have a strong opinion, consider looking into it.

4) Check out some party and candidate websites. Once upon a time, it might have been difficult to find out about local candidates. Not anymore. Here are my two candidates for Board of Supervisors: Chris Grisafe and Linda Symth. They have websites similar to candidates for Congress. Same thing for the local political parties in my county. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of policy positions, that’s great. But when you check out the candidate websites, you might be better off (hold your breath, elitist intellectuals!) looking over their biography pages. There’s a perfectly reasonable case for gyroscopic representation; that is, voting for someone because you think they have a similar background or lifestyle or outlook as you, and not worrying about their specific policy positions, but instead trusting that they will reason the same way you do. It’s also noteworthy that some offices are non-partisan, like school board in Fairfax County. That means you can’t use the party shorthand in the voting booth. So make sure you check out those candidates in particular.

5) Gather some endorsements, preferably from a source you trust — like a friend or a newspaper. This is the final step. Now that you have some intuition about the candidates, run a diagnostic by getting some independent opinion. For instance, I was able to check my intuition  for school board against the Washington Post endorsements. If your friend or the newspaper confirms what you already thought, then you’re done. If they don’t, think through their argument for 10 minutes and see if you change your mind. If so, great. If not, also great. But don’t belabor it.

Once you’ve done all of those steps, run a self-check on where you stand. You may have determined that you prefer one party or the other. Great! Just write down who you like in any non-partisan race and vote for all the partisan candidates in the other races. If you like candidates across the parties, download a sample ballot (again, often available at the county website), mark your choices, and bring it with you to the polling place. It’s also ok to skip races if you really have no opinion. Nothing wrong with that!

It’s that easy. And I can’t help but reiterate: you don’t need to do very much, or really any, research to be a credible voter in local elections. The party cue will usually get you 95% of the way there, and a bit more research will do the rest.

And in case you’re reading in Providence district of Fairfax County in Virginia, here are my specific endorsements for Tuesday (I have only endorsed races where I have a clear preference):

State Senate (district 34) — Chap Peterson (D)

Providence District Rep to Board of Supervisors — Linda Q. Smyth (D)

School Board At-large (pick 3): Theodore Velkoff, Ilyrong Moon, and Lolita Smoak