With municipal elections set for Saturday and record-breaking numbers of candidates running for Victoria council, voters have some online options to help them sort out their picks for public office.

You can start at www.vicnews.com, then click on the Civic Elections button near the top right-hand corner.

That will take you to all of our municipal election coverage for Victoria, Esquimalt and the Greater Victoria School District board, as well as special web-only candidate profiles.

Feature stories include profiles of Victoria and Esquimalt mayoral candidates and issue-centered looks at major challenges facing the city and the township. Once on the civic election page, you can also plug in your postal code and find a list of self-submitted candidate profiles.

A number of community groups have also gotten into the online election-coverage game, hosting candidate information on their websites.

Victoriavotes.ca, an initiative of the B.C. Community Economic Development Network, sent Victoria candidates nine questions on three topics: affordable housing, development and economic sustainability.

The website was launched "because there are too many candidates and too few ways to learn about them," said Nicole Charland, the group's co-ordinator.

The Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce has a special election page, found via a link at www.victoriachamber.ca. Candidates in the four core municipalities were given a list of questions related to business concerns.

VibrantVictoria.ca's election discussion forums are unique in that they give readers and candidates a place to interact and discuss issues, said Mike Kozakowski of Skyscraper Source Media, which runs the website.

"(Readers) have the ability to see a candidate's entire campaign - what they're for, what they're against - and one of the coolest things we've noticed is that some (candidates) actually changed their opinion based on feedback they received from individuals on the forum."

Some websites are dedicated to collecting candidates' views around single issues.

Dog owners may want to turn to www.citizencanine.org to learn for candidates' attitudes toward pooches.

Those worried about how the city will protect its parks can turn to the Cridge Park Rescue Group's site, www.cridgeparkrescue.com, for answers.

The City of Victoria's website, www.victoria.ca, has a full list of candidates and everything you need to know to cast your vote, with polling locations and time, plus voter I.D. and qualification requirements.

For the first time, the city has posted election information on Facebook, where users can search for the 'Victoria Votes 2008' page.

Esquimalt has the same information for its voters at www.esquimalt.ca.

kvass@vicnews.com