Better Than the Best: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Better Than the Best is and who runs it

Better Than the Best is a readers' choice award program run by Ocala Magazine, a city magazine based in Ocala, Florida. The magazine's masthead carries the address 743 E. Fort King St., Ocala, FL 34471, and it describes itself as "Ocala's #1 Most award-winning city magazine." The program is a best-of ballot: local readers pick their favorite businesses, places and people across a range of categories, and the favorites with the most support win.

Unlike many Florida readers' polls that rent a third-party voting platform, Ocala Magazine prints this ballot on ocalamagazine.com, its own domain. The voting page lives under a 2025 voting address, which means the magazine controls the ballot, the timing and the rules directly. Its own pages state that "Ocala Magazine has proudly hosted the Better Than the Best contest," and the 2025 round is described by the magazine as its "32nd annual contest," a phrase that points to a tradition of celebrating community excellence going back decades in Ocala.

The table below gathers the confirmed facts about this Ocala ballot.

The dated record for the Ocala ballot

Two cycles of Better Than the Best sit on the published timeline: 2025 and 2026. The 2025 round carries the fullest published detail. On January 22, 2026, the magazine announced that 2025 Better than the Best nominations were open, which starts the cycle by letting readers and businesses put names forward. On October 27, 2025, the magazine declared that 2025 Better Than the Best voting was open, and the ballot page carried the line that voting ends on November 10th at Midnight EST.

The magazine's own description quotes its celebration of "the winners of Ocala Magazine's 2025 Better Than the Best 32nd annual contest," which is the clearest published statement of how long the tradition has run. A 32nd annual contest places the program's origins decades back, though the magazine does not print a founding year on the voting page itself.

On the calendar side, Ocala Magazine prints no standing schedule: the opening and closing dates of future rounds, and any dates for the switch or party phases the program references, exist only on the live cycle; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The rules side is the same. The voting page carries no category roster, no published ceiling on repeat voting and no eligibility text, so those details can only be read on the ballot itself while a round is open.

How a supporter votes in Better Than the Best today

Voting in Better Than the Best works as an open ballot printed on ocalamagazine.com. A supporter opens the 2025 Better Than the Best voting page, moves through the categories shown on the live ballot, selects a favorite in each one, and submits before the stated close. For the 2025 round that close was November 10th at Midnight EST, a deadline the magazine printed directly on the ballot page.

Since ocalamagazine.com belongs to the publisher, the page a supporter opens settles every question: which categories are open, whether a login is requested, and how the submit step works. The voting page does not print an account requirement, and the program reads as an open vote for the magazine's readers, but any verification step Ocala Magazine adds for a given cycle would surface on that same page.

The cycle has more than one phase. The magazine's own pages reference nominations, a switch round and a party alongside the main voting round, and the January 22, 2026 nominations announcement shows that the program opens with a nomination phase before voting begins. A supporter who wants a particular business on the ballot should therefore watch for the nominations window, not only the voting window, since a favorite has to be named before it can collect votes.

One practical note: the ballot page is dated to a specific edition, so the 2025 address is the 2025 ballot. Each new cycle gets a fresh page on ocalamagazine.com, and supporters should follow the magazine's announcements instead of reusing an old link.

How this ballot sits beside its Florida neighbours

Better Than the Best shares the Florida best-of field with six other programs, but it is the only one in this group run by a city magazine for its own home market of Ocala. The others answer to different publishers and different cities: the Best of Florida Awards, the Best of Miami Readers' Poll, the Best of Orlando, the Best of Tallahassee, the Best of the Bay and Best in Destin.

Two things set the Ocala ballot apart. First, the host: Ocala Magazine prints the vote on ocalamagazine.com itself, so ballot, deadlines and results all stay inside the publisher's domain instead of moving onto a shared contest platform. Second, the longevity claim: the magazine's own description of the 2025 round as its 32nd annual contest is a stronger published history than most local readers' polls can point to.

For a business in Ocala, that matters in a simple way. Support gathered for this ballot comes from the magazine's local readership, and a win carries the weight of a publication that has run the program for decades. A business operating across several Florida markets may therefore appear on this ballot and on one of the city polls above at the same time, but each program keeps a separate publisher, a separate window and separate rules, and votes gathered for one count nowhere else.

Strengthening support before the Ocala close

Because this ballot is an open vote printed on ocalamagazine.com, the support that counts is people who open the page and submit. The published deadline gives a campaign its shape: the 2025 round closed on November 10th at Midnight EST, so outreach aimed at Ocala Magazine's readers works best while the round is open and loses its target once the close passes. A business nominated in January has months of runway before voting opens in late October, which is time to line up Ocala customers who will actually submit.

The ballot page is silent on outside help, incentives and voting software, so assume Ocala Magazine enforces whatever it decides on its own domain. Outreach that asks real customers to vote, in person or through your own channels, fits any readers' poll. Our votes guide covers that kind of push in detail, and award-vote support is described separately for readers weighing options. Whatever route you take, the magazine's live voting page settles the rules for the cycle in progress.