The tragedy of an off-year, municipal election is this:

Turn on your television in the next couple of days and you’ll be far more likely to hear coverage of the Trump impeachment inquiry, or the battle among the cast of thousands seeking to be the Democrats 2020 presidential nominee, than you are to hear about Tuesday’s election.

But the reality is this, dear reader.

If the management of public schools, quality policing, land use planning, a fair criminal justice system, heck, even on-time trash pick-up is important to you, you should be paying attention to your local elections on Nov. 5.

We can help get you started, with PennLive’s general election guide to the various races and candidates.

To further whet your appetite, here’s a starter set of the races that have sort of crossed over political boundaries this fall to draw more general regional interest.

County Commissioners

Democrats have been flipping the control of several county courthouses throughout the Philly suburbs in recent years. Will the invasion jump west over the bucolic farm fields and subdivisions of Lancaster to Dauphin County this year?

It is, it must be noted, the only county in south central Pennsylvania in which Democratic voter registrations outnumber Republicans, and the margin now exceeds 10,000.

Republican incumbents Jeff Haste and Mike Pries are seeking their fifth and third terms, respectively. Democratic incumbent George Hartwick is seeking a fifth term, and his running mate, Diane Bowman, will seek to make both of them majority commissioners.

But Republicans have one big-time edge in the battle of trendlines: They historically turn out at much higher levels in the off-year elections. In the last commissioners’ election in 2015, the Republican turnout in Dauphin County was 33.2 percent, a full 10 percentage points higher than the Democrats’ 23.0 percent.

The Blue-Red divide is really only part of the story in commissioners race.

With four people running for three seats, there is also the reality that Hartwick is a very comfortable partner with the majority Republicans, so the race-within-a-race is whether Bowman can pick off any of the three incumbents.

There are several other races to watch at the county level.

Democratic candidates are making a spirited run in the Cumberland County commissioners race, energized by the fact that Gov. Tom Wolf carried the county in his 2018 re-elect campaign. A Democrat has carried the county in a gubernatorial race only one other time since the Great Depression.

Republican incumbents Gary Eichelberger and Vince DiFillipo are being challenged by Democrats Michael Fedor and Jean Foschi.

But the Democrats will have a tough climb. Republicans hold a commanding, 28,000-person voter registration edge, and have held a majority on the board of commissioners since the 1980s.

In Franklin County, the commissioners race has taken on unusual drama because of a write-in campaign being waged by longtime incumbent Bob Thomas to win a new term.

Thomas, who has been on the three-member board for 24 years, was surprised in the May primary by Republican challenger John Flannery, who entered the race on an argument that the current board had lost its sense of accountability to taxpayers.

Thomas is not going gently into the night, saying overwhelming support from Republicans, Democrats and independents has caused him to make the fight.

This has raised the unusual prospect, in a county where Republicans make up just under 60 percent of all registered voters, of the Democrats being totally shut out of the board of commissioners.

Finally, there’s Lebanon County.

There Republican incumbents William Ames and Robert Phillips must hope their party has recovered enough from a bruising primary battle in which county GOP leadership sought to replace Ames to retain a majority in the commissioners office.

County judgeships

The most interesting battle here is the race to fill two open judge positions in Cumberland County - one to fill a new seat granted Cumberland by the state legislature because of increasing caseloads; the other to replace former Judge Skip Ebert, who left the bench last year to become district attorney.

Here, there are three Republicans and one independent vying for the two 10-year terms.

But one of those Republicans, county Register of Wills Lisa Grayson, has become the target of blistering attacks by the state Republican Party, presumably because she won and is running with the Democratic Party’s nomination.

So is fellow Republican Matt Smith who won nominations from both parties in the spring primary, but who is not facing the same negative mailings.

The other official Republican nominee is attorney Carrie Hyams, who was added to the general election ballot in September after Kurt Sohonage, who won the GOP primary with Smith, abandoned his candidacy for personal and family reasons.

Hyams, who unsuccessfully sought a GOP nomination for county judge in 2015, is a private practice attorney on the West Shore who has also served as solicitor to the Dauphin County Children and Youth Services office. While she has the edge of being on the Republican ballot, Hyams had only eight weeks to actively campaign.

Grayson, who cross-filed in the spring and finished in a close third in a four-way GOP primary, was actually the top vote-getter across all parties in the May balloting.

Adding an extra layer of intrigue is the independent candidacy of attorney Susan Pickford. Touting 34 years of practicing law, she is arguing that voters deserve a judge who is not beholden to either party.

A number of issues have made various races for borough councils, township boards of supervisors and school boards interesting to watch.

The political correctness watch

A. The usually sleepy race for Hampden Township commissioner has gotten some spice this year because of attention shown on years worth of political humor writings written by longtime Commissioner Al Bienstock, who seeks re-election along with longtime colleague John Thomas.

Democrat challengers David Fish and Ryan Argot have argued that the right-wing writings, which referenced certain ethnic groups and homosexuals and seemed to encourage racial profiling, call into serious question Bienstock’s ability to serve all residents fairly.

Bienstock has already stepped down as president of the board of commissioners, but he is staying in the race. He Bienstock has insisted that he meant no one any harm in his limericks, and this way he can let the voters make the final call on his continued fitness to serve.

B. Palmyra school board candidate Suzan Gilligan will see if she can overcome recent coverage in The Lebanon Daily News pointing out past Facebook posts in which she defended the flying of the Confederate flag for “heritage” reasons, and even reported that she was buying her own.

Gilligan is part of one of two distinct slates in the race that had its initial roots in opposition to the current school board’s drive to raise teacher and support staff pay to bring it closer to the mid-point of the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit.

Gilligan’s slate has argued that the current board is not being fair to the district’s taxpayers.

A chicken sandwich in every pot?

In Camp Hill, where all the talk is about plans for a new Chick-fil-A restaurant on a lot that many feel poses a threat to the quality of life in an abutting residential neighborhood, borough resident Jennifer Hoover is leading a spirited write-in campaign for a borough council seat on behalf of those who are opposed not necessarily to the Chick-fil-A, but to the current plan, as proposed, on that particular site.

The founder of a grassroots movement called Safe Streets Camp Hill, Hoover is seen as a champion of residents who are fighting for modifications to the project, and, on a larger scale, are battling for greater transparency and openness in borough operations.

She joins six other candidates vying for three open seats, including Democrat incumbent Erin Vroman and hopefuls Alissa Packer and Melissa Schoettle, and Republican hopefuls Julie Mowery Young, Beth Kozicki and Bonnie Bentz.

The battle for Hersheyland

Leaders of both major party committees in Dauphin County cited this election for two open seats on the Derry Township board of supervisors as right at the top of their hot contests list this fall.

Democrats Skip Becker and Chuck Duncan, at the tip of the spear of their party’s efforts to plant deeper grassroots throughout the county, are running hard to win a third seat on the five-member board of supervisors and putting themselves in the majority.

Republicans Natalie Nutt and Carter Wyckoff, meanwhile, are working just as hard to make their stand here. If the Republicans win one seat, they’ll retain a 3-2 majority on the board.

Dauphin County Democrats say they are also hoping to pick up seats on the Swatara Township Board of Commissioners.

Shippensburg school board.

Susan Spicka, who became a grassroots leader for public education investment after former Gov. Tom Corbett’s cuts in state aid to public schools in 2011, is battling to maintain her local platform on the Shippensburg school board against an opponent, Dwayne Burt who argues Spicka and her allies are a little too progressive for the community and spending too much.

Spicka and two other incumbents are seeking to retain their current working majority against a group of former board members in a battle that has more to do with newer residents with new ideas vs. longer-term residents who like things the way they are than the Democrat-Republican divide.