I love voting. I like the whole idea of it, I like doing it, it gives me warm fuzzy feelings. Mmhmm.. This coming Tuesday, May 2, is a primary election day. It is not that easy to find information about our local elections in general, but certainly not for the primaries. So, here’s a quick and dirty voter guide.

The State of Indiana’s contribution to the information pool is [this repository of official filings and stuff](http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/), the most useful part of which is [this list of registered candidates](http://www.in.gov/sos/elections/pdfs/2006Primary_Website_Candidate_List.pdf).

Since Indiana has closed primaries (which a lot of people gripe about, but makes sense to me) the best information resource for the May 2 election is probably the local party websites. The [Monroe County Democrats](http://www.monroedems.org/) maintain a nice [index of their candidates](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php). Sadly, the [Monroe County Republicans website](http://www.mocogop.com/index.cfm) has no such list. So, local Republicans probably have to go from the State’s list, and manually search for each candidate. I would do that if I were planning on voting Republican in the primary, but I’m not, so I won’t.

By the way, from what I can tell, neither the Green Party nor the Libertarian Party runs a primary.

##Contested Races in the Monroe County Democratic Primary

There are only a few contested elections in the Monroe County Democratic Primary Ballot. Here they are, with whatever candidate web sites I could find:

###Monroe County Sheriff
Everyone in Monroe County will be voting for this.

* [William Brown](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=54) [Home Page](http://www.billbrownforsheriffmonroecounty.com/)
* [Jim Kennedy](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=40) [Home Page](http://www.jimkennedyforsheriff.com/pages/1/index.htm)
* [Larry Smith](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=37) [Home Page](http://www.larrysmithforsheriff.com/index.html)

###Monroe County Circuit Court Judge, Division V
I’m pretty sure everyone in Monroe County will be voting for this too.

* [Valeri Haughton](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=33) [Home Page](http://valerihaughton.com/)
* [Alphonso Manns](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=38) [Home Page](http://www.mannslaw.com/index.html)
* [Robert “Bob” Miller](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=34)

###Monroe County Council, District 4
The only contested County Council district in the Democratic Primary is this one, which is roughly the City of Bloomington ([this map gives more detail](http://www.jilllesh.com/images/district4map.gif)).

* [Bill Hayden](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=51)
* [Jill Lesh](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=43) [Home Page](http://www.jilllesh.com/)

###United States Representative, District 9
Most everyone in Monroe County is in this district. It’s one of the very few contested House Seats in the nation, presently held by Republican [Mike Sodrel](http://sodrel.house.gov/), who beat out Baron Hill in 2004 by fewer that 2000 votes (out of almost 300,000 votes cast).

* [Gretchen Clearwater](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=31) [Home Page](http://www.clearwaterforcongress.com/)
* [Baron Hill](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=11) [Home Page](http://www.bringbackbaron.com/)

###United States Representative, District 4
But, a few people in Monroe County (on the far west edge) are in this district (presently held by Republican [Steve Buyer](http://stevebuyer.house.gov/)).

* [Rick Cornstuble](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=58)
* [David Sanders](http://www.monroedems.org/candidates.php?id=44) [Home Page](http://www.sandersforcongress.org/)