Best of Ohio: How Voting Works & How to Win

Fifty blanks on one ballot, and a business needs voters to fill at least twenty-five

No dropdown menus. No pre-loaded list of nominees to click through. Best of Ohio runs as a write-in ballot, roughly fifty categories, each one a blank field where a voter types in a business name by hand. And here's the part that changes the whole campaign math: a ballot only counts toward the final tally if at least twenty-five of those fifty blanks get filled in.

That's a genuinely different ask than most readers-choice programs on this site. A single-category vote, click one name and submit, takes seconds. Completing half a statewide ballot from memory, spelling business names correctly across categories a voter may not even shop in regularly, is a real time investment.

A business asking supporters for a vote here isn't asking for one click. It's asking someone to sit down, think through two dozen-plus favorite Ohio businesses across categories they may not have considered in months, and spell every one correctly enough to register. Worth saying plainly before a campaign starts, not after turnout disappoints.

A magazine's statewide ballot, not a hometown paper's readers' poll

Ohio Magazine runs Best of Ohio at the state level, which puts it in different company than most of the best-of programs businesses in Akron, Columbus, or Cincinnati already deal with. A city paper's readers' poll draws its voter base from one metro. A statewide magazine ballot, in theory, draws from anywhere in Ohio, whether or not a voter has ever set foot in the business's actual city.

That broader pool cuts two ways. A well-known statewide brand, a chain restaurant or a widely covered attraction, has a real shot at write-in recognition from voters who've never visited but know the name. A genuinely excellent but small local shop competes for the same blank field against businesses with statewide name recognition it doesn't have; a tougher climb than a hometown-only readers' poll would present.

Nothing in the public record specifies whether Ohio Magazine weights results by region or publishes county-level breakdowns. Treating the ballot as one shared statewide pool, rather than assuming a regional tally exists, is the safer read until the magazine states otherwise.

What a write-in format actually does to a campaign

Spelling matters here in a way it doesn't on a click-to-select ballot. A write-in field that reads "Marcello's" when the business is legally registered under a slightly different form risks not counting as the same entry, depending on how Ohio Magazine's team reconciles variant entries during counting. Nothing in the public record describes that reconciliation process, so the safest move for a campaign is telling supporters the exact name to type, character for character, rather than trusting memory.

The twenty-five-category minimum changes the ask too. A campaign can't just point supporters at "our category" and call it done, because a partially completed ballot under twenty-five filled blanks doesn't count at all, for any category, including the one the business actually cares about. That's a meaningfully different message than the single-click reminder that works for most other programs on this site: a supporter needs encouragement to finish the whole ballot, not just find one field.

No vote cap, exact voting window, or results date is confirmed in the public record either. Ohio Magazine's own site is the source for those details once a cycle is actually open.

Columbus, Akron, and a statewide ballot are three different games

Ohio runs plenty of best-of business programs below the state level, and Best of Ohio doesn't replace any of them. CBUS Top Picks Community Choice Awards covers Columbus specifically, its own ballot and its own organizer, unrelated to Ohio Magazine's statewide write-in format. Akron Community's Choice Awards does the same for the Akron market.

A Columbus business weighing both CBUS Top Picks and Best of Ohio is running two genuinely different campaigns, not one campaign with two names. Neither ballot format transfers to the other, and neither organizer shares results with the other.

Worth a quick word too: this program has nothing to do with Ohio's high school sports fan votes. The Akron-Area High School Athlete of the Week and Cincinnati Enquirer Athlete of the Week polls cover student athletes on a completely separate track from Ohio Magazine's business ballot.

Running a write-in campaign honestly, twenty-five blanks and all

Give supporters the exact business name, spelled precisely, and explain the twenty-five-category threshold up front. A partial ballot that stops at ten filled blanks doesn't help the business at all under Ohio Magazine's own stated rule, so the ask has to be "complete enough of the ballot to count," not just "find our category."

Real customers who actually know and use the business are worth far more here than volume alone. Someone unfamiliar with the brand, asked to write it into a blank field from a text message, is more likely to misspell it or abandon the ballot halfway through than someone who already has the name memorized.

Fake or bot-driven submissions on a write-in ballot are also easier to flag than on a click-based one; a wave of identical, oddly formatted write-ins looks nothing like organic voter behavior. For general campaign mechanics that hold up across most Ohio readers-choice programs, see how online contest votes work, and check is buying votes legal before committing budget to a statewide push. Award-style vote campaigns covers pacing advice that applies to a write-in ballot's longer completion time as much as a click-based one.