Bestof2021: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Bestof2021 readers' poll is, and who runs it

A Santa Barbara business that hears customers mention voting for it in the Indy's Best Of poll is really hearing about a specific ballot: the Best Of Santa Barbara 2021 Readers' Poll, run by the Santa Barbara Independent on the publication's own website. The page name Bestof2021 is simply the slug of that ballot, carried in its address at independent.com/bestof2021. There is no outside contest platform in the middle; organizer and host are the same newsroom.

This ballot belongs to the readers'-choice family of contests, the format in which a local publication asks its audience to name the favorite business in each of a set of categories. In this case the market is Santa Barbara, California, and the voters are the Independent's own readers. The poll follows a two-phase shape that the 2021 edition made explicit: readers first nominate during a nomination period, and the nominees that emerge then go to a public vote.

The facts table below pulls together what is fixed about the program. Everything in it comes from the material published for this ballot.

One caution for a business owner reading this: the brand is registered as Best Of Santa Barbara, and the poll should not be confused with similarly named readers' choice contests run by other California publications. The address to trust is the Independent's own.

The dated history: editions, the 2021 window, and what is not published

The confirmed history for this program covers editions in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2026. That is a six-year span with a gap, which is why the honest description is a recurring readers' poll rather than an unbroken yearly run. The 2021 edition is the one whose published rules and dates are spelled out in full, so it anchors most of what this page states.

For 2021, the sequence ran in three dated stages. Nominations opened June 10 and closed July 7, and the ballot was built from what readers put forward in that window. Voting then ran from August 5 through September 1, with supporters able to vote and change their votes until September 1, 2021, at 11:59pm PST. Winners were announced in the Best Of Santa Barbara issue publishing October 21, closing the cycle roughly seven weeks after nominations began.

Several details a careful supporter might want are simply not published in the material available for this program. The Independent has not released a current slate of ballot categories, a rule on how many votes one person may cast, or a statement on which businesses qualify; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For later editions, including 2022 and 2026, the publication has confirmed the poll ran but the dated window for each of those cycles is its own. Reading 2021's August-to-September shape as a permanent fixture would be a guess, and the safest source for the current year's dates is the ballot itself once the Independent posts it.

How a supporter votes on the Bestof2021 ballot today

The mechanic a supporter performs is deliberately simple, because the Independent wants casual readers to finish the ballot. A reader opens independent.com/bestof2021 during the open voting period, sees the nominees that the nomination round produced, and picks a favorite in each category they care about. Nothing requires an account on an outside platform; the ballot lives entirely on the publication's own site.

Two features of the published 2021 rules matter for anyone campaigning for votes. First, the deadline is a hard one: voting and vote changes closed September 1, 2021, at 11:59pm PST. Second, votes were changeable, which means a supporter who voted early could revise their picks, and a business could honestly ask its customers to vote again late in the window without breaking any stated rule.

The sequence in practice runs as follows. Check that the voting period is open on the live page. Choose favorites across the full slate of 2021, or whatever the current slate shows. Submit the votes, and note the closing date so a return trip before the deadline is possible. After the close, watch for the Best Of Santa Barbara issue, where the Independent prints the winners; the 2021 issue landed on October 21.

What the ballot does not display, in the published material, is any statement about vote frequency limits. A supporter who wants certainty about how often they may vote should read the rules block on the current ballot page rather than assume the 2021 text still applies.

How this ballot sits beside its California neighbours

California is dense with readers' choice ballots, and this one has a distinct profile: it is the only one here owned end to end by a single alt-weekly publication. The Independent runs nominations, voting, hosting and the winners issue on independent.com, with no third-party contest platform involved. Most comparable programs in the state are organized differently, and several sit far from Santa Barbara geographically.

Among the nearby programs by ownership or format, Best of Marin serves the Bay Area's Marin communities, while Best of Orange County and Best of San Diego & Best Restaurants cover much larger southern markets. Best of Silicon Valley and Best of Central Valley Business round out the state's major regions, and Best of North State Community's Choice Awards serves the far north. Each answers to its own organizer, and a fact about any of them tells you nothing about the Independent's poll.

What makes the Santa Barbara ballot different in practice is scale and identity. It is a city-level readers' poll for a compact coastal market, tied to a publication readers actually read, and its winners carry local credibility because they appear in print in the Best Of Santa Barbara issue. For a business weighing where to direct its campaigning effort, that combination of a defined local audience and a printed result is the program's own argument, separate from any other California ballot on this site.

Strengthening support for your nomination without tripping the rules

For a nominated Santa Barbara business, the practical question is turnout, and the ballot's own design points at the answer. Votes come from readers, the window is dated, and in 2021 votes could be changed until the close, so reminders late in the period had real value. Ask customers at the counter, share the ballot link on your own channels while voting is open, and make the ask specific: name your category, name the address, and give the deadline.

Stay inside the organizer's framing. This is a readers' poll, so support that comes from actual local readers is the kind the program is built to measure, and any shortcut that substitutes volume for readers cuts against the ballot's stated purpose. Before spending on outside promotion, read our overview at earning genuine support in public ballots and, if a paid service is under consideration, the pricing context at buy votes online. No vote service of any kind can promise a win in a readers' choice ballot, and the Independent's announcement in its October issue is the only result that counts.