Litchfield Magazine Readers' Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Litchfield Magazine Readers' Choice Contest?

The Litchfield Magazine Readers' Choice Contest is a best-of ballot for Litchfield County, Connecticut, in which the publication asks its readers to name their favorite things about the county. The organizer is Litchfield Magazine, whose site footer carries a copyright line for HAPPENING IN THE HILLS, LLC running from 2015 through 2026. The program sits in the On Our Radar area of litchfieldmagazine.com, and the current results page lives at the readers-choice-2025-winners address on that same domain, so the vote is carried on the organizer's own site instead of an outside balloting service.

The magazine describes the contest in its own words as "our annual Reader's Choice Contest" and ties the outcome to its Best of Litchfield County issue, which highlights the winners. Because the ballot honors favorites across a whole county rather than a single school, team or person, it functions as a community favorites program in the local-business space: the entries people rally behind are restaurants, shops, services and the like, chosen by the readers who use them.

When does voting happen, and which editions are confirmed?

Three editions are anchored to live pages under the On Our Radar readers-choice path: 2023, 2024 and 2025. The magazine itself calls the program annual, and the yearly rhythm holds across every cycle a page confirms.

For the 2025 cycle, the survey page printed a Voting Round of November 6-15. The cycle before it laid out the earlier stage on the 2024 survey page: a Nomination Round of October 17-27, afterwards marked CLOSED, with the explanation that the top five entries by nomination count in each category would advance. Results then follow the voting: the article titled "Litchfield County Reader's Choice 2025 Winners" went up on January 23, 2025, and the 2025 Best of Litchfield County issue highlights those winners.

Several boundaries sit outside what the magazine prints. Day-level opening and closing hours for either round never appear in the notices, and no schedule for a following cycle is pre-announced on the winners page. Neither the winners page nor the survey notices publish the category roster, a per-supporter vote ceiling or eligibility terms; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter actually cast a vote?

Taking part means moving through two stages on the magazine's website. Stage one is nomination: once the magazine opens the round, supporters submit the favorites they want considered, working category by category. The 2024 notice set out the filter without decoration: the top five entries by nomination count in each category advance, and a favorite that draws fewer nominations stops there.

Stage two is the vote itself. Once the November 6-15 round opened in 2025, the survey form sat directly on litchfieldmagazine.com, where a supporter picks a category, reviews the finalists listed beneath it, selects a choice and submits. Nothing about the flow suggests a complicated ballot; it is a succession of category lists, each reduced to the entries that survived nomination.

The printed notices leave a few practical questions open. They say nothing about creating an account or signing in before submitting, and they publish no per-day or per-hour rule governing repeat visits. A supporter who wants to return over several days of the voting span should simply watch the survey page, since any limit the magazine applies would be stated there rather than in advance.

How does this ballot compare with other Connecticut reader's choice contests?

Connecticut carries a crowded field of reader-facing best-of ballots, and this one stands apart on two points: the size of the place it covers and the kind of publisher behind it. Neighboring programs on this site include Best of Connecticut, Moffly Media's Best of the Gold Coast, the Hartford Courant's paired ballots for Best of Hartford and Best of New Haven, Best of West Hartford, and CommunityVotes Bridgeport. Those titles speak for themselves: some cover the whole state in name, others single cities or towns.

The Litchfield program is the only one in that group named for a full county and run by a county magazine on its own domain, with the results folded into the publisher's flagship Best of Litchfield County issue rather than posted as a standalone list. Its two-round design also matters: a favorite must first gather enough nominations to reach the top five in its category before any voting begins, which shapes when and how supporters campaign for their picks. For a business in the county's towns, this ballot and a city-titled contest are complements, not substitutes, since their audiences barely overlap.

How can a nominated business gather more support?

The two-round format dictates the order of operations. First priority is the nomination stage: a business needs enough named nominations to finish among the top five in its category, because the voting ballot lists only those finalists. Missing that cut ends the run before any voting starts.

Once the voting round is open, the work shifts to mobilizing the people who already favor you: send them the direct link to your category on the survey rather than the magazine's homepage, and remind them while the printed voting span lasts. The magazine's contest notices carry no stated policy on paid promotion or voting services, so weigh any outside help against the terms as printed when the round opens. General methods are collected in the guide to earning more votes online, and program-specific support is described at the award votes page. Even with help, nothing decides the outcome in advance; the count when the round closes does.