Election Musing: No Fun to Take the GOP Ballot!

As I was looking at the ballot for the coming election I saw again the results of living in an area where one party dominates the landscape locally.  Once you get past the national and statewide races, the ballot for republicans in Jackson County gets very boring.  Many races feature that very busy entity, "No candidate filed."  Meantime on the democratic ballot, we have such juiciness as the Moreno-Runions race, with its dueling mailers and flying accusations. You just can't beat the Jackson County Sheriff race for silliness and drama...
It leaves the right leaning voter with a difficult choice:  take a GOP ballot to have a say in the 8 person race to be the republican nominee for the US Senate race against incumbent Claire McCaskill, the 4 person race to decide the nominee for Missouri governor, the 4 person race for lieutenant governor, and so on, down to whether or not to give Jacob Turk another crack at Emanual Cleaver or take a Democratic ballot as to vote on those local people who in the end might have more influence in the daily life of the voter but have no say in who will take on Claire, or Jay Nixon on the GOP side.
Too bad you can't split the ballot apart or run the local races non-partisan; it would be interesting to see if removing this annoying Hobson's choice made a difference in results or turnout in the end.