For Me The Sob: How Voting Works & How to Win

What For Me The Sob is and who runs it

For Me The Sob is an open reader ballot put out by OC Weekly, the alt-weekly that calls itself Orange County's leading source of news, culture and entertainment. Its ballot page runs under the title Vote for Me, the SOB!, and it lives on OC Weekly's own ground rather than any third-party balloting service. That matters for anyone casting a vote: the whole process, from opening the page to submitting picks, plays out under the OC Weekly address, and the direct URL is the cleanest way in.

The ballot belongs to the best-of category with a business angle, aimed at readers across Orange County in California. No single city is tied to it in the publisher's material, so the market is the county and its readership rather than one municipality. The table below pulls the fixed details together.

Because organizer and host are one and the same, every question about rules, timing and categories lands with OC Weekly. No separate balloting vendor sits behind the vote, and no promotion listing for this market runs alongside the ballot, which leaves the program easy to describe and unusually dependent on its live page for detail.

The dated facts for this Orange County ballot

This ballot has three edition years behind it: 2001, 2018 and 2019. The 2018 and 2019 runs are tied to the ballot page itself, which carried Best of 2018 branding in its navigation, while 2001 comes from the publisher's site history for the same address. Voting has fallen in November, a pattern that fits an alt-weekly best-of cycle wrapping up before the year turns.

Equally relevant is what OC Weekly leaves unpublished. The precise open and close dates of any cycle, the lineup of categories on the ballot, any ceiling on repeat voting by a single supporter, and eligibility wording never appear in the publisher's material; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

No year for the next edition has been announced either. The latest confirmed run was 2019, and nothing published since then says when or whether the ballot comes back, so a business or supporter hoping for another cycle has no printed date to plan around. November remains the month to watch, and actual dates surface only on the live page, because a publisher-run ballot can open, run and close inside a short stretch of that month.

How a supporter votes on the OC Weekly ballot

Voting is a straight public tally. A supporter opens the ballot page under the OC Weekly domain, reads the picks on offer, and submits a vote for the entry they back. Nothing in the publisher's material describes an account wall or a third-party login, so the working assumption is that anyone landing on the page while the cycle runs can take part. That assumption has edges: whether the form requests an email, whether repeat votes by a single supporter are allowed, and whether a nomination round comes first are details OC Weekly has not spelled out.

One thing a supporter can count on is the address itself. The ballot is a single page titled Vote for Me, the SOB!, and reaching it directly beats clicking through site menus, because publisher navigation shifts between cycles. On the page itself, the vote is the ordinary click-and-submit flow of a publisher-run poll.

Anyone backing a business should also note the gaps: the page carries no published daily-vote rule and no stated cap. A supporter thinking about returning to vote again has no printed rule saying whether that counts, so the sensible course is to follow whatever wording the live form shows during the window and to treat OC Weekly's page as the final word on anything the material leaves open.

Where this ballot sits among California best-of programs

For Me The Sob belongs to a wider family of California best-of ballots, six of which run alongside it. Best of Orange County is the closest neighbour by market, covering the same county under a broader readers-choice format. Best of Marin, Best of Silicon Valley and Best of San Diego & Best Restaurants carry the model to other regions of the state, while Best of Central Valley Business shares the business angle in a different market. Best of North State Community's Choice Awards completes the set up north.

What sets this ballot apart is its shape. Where the others run as wide multi-category readers-choice contests, this one is a single-purpose page built around one title, Vote for Me, the SOB!, put out by an alt-weekly rather than by a chamber of commerce or a local publisher network. Its host is the publisher's own domain, not a shared balloting platform, so its rules and rhythm belong to OC Weekly alone.

For a business weighing where to spend outreach effort, that difference counts. The alt-weekly audience for this county is distinct from the readership behind those other California ballots, and support earned here transfers nowhere. Every program in the family reports to a separate publisher with its own window and rules, so a push built for this November ballot cannot be copied onto a neighbouring contest without reading that contest's live page first.

Strengthening support for a For Me The Sob pick

Support here comes down to turning out Orange County readers during the November window. The ballot rewards concentrated, genuine backing: a business that asks customers directly, shares the ballot address, and reminds people while voting is open is working with the mechanic rather than against it. A reminder sent after the window closes earns nothing, so timing the ask to the live cycle matters as much as the ask itself.

OC Weekly has printed no statement on outside help or purchased votes, so the honest position is that no rule exists in public to lean on in either direction. What is certain is the format: an open vote on the publisher's domain, decided by whoever reaches the page and casts a ballot while it is live. For tactics suited to a public-vote format, see our votes guide, and for the wider legal position on paid support see whether buying votes is legal.