It varies everywhere, even from state to state in the US.

The US system is kind of broken - they ask you to vote for way too many things. Where I'm from I just vote for a party - I basically say "yeah, the green party are cool", and then the party decides who to put in which position should they get enough votes. I can give a +1 to candidates I like personally, but I don't have to.

In the US you might be asked to vote for school boards, a sheriff, and a bunch of weird positions. There's no realistic chance you'll make an informed decision for all of them.

Sadly, it's very important you still vote, because the republicans are using this broken system to fill these positions with far-right lunatics. So basically seek out information as much as you can, but at the end of the day just vote for whichever Democrat is on the ballot whenever in doubt. They're not guaranteed to be good - in fact they're likely to be pretty bad - but they're pretty much guaranteed to be the lesser of two evils.

Still might vary though - local politics are weird, and there are no rules set in stones. Some places you still have decent republicans on the local level (or so I've heard).