Best of Your Hometown (The Item and The Landmark): How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Best of Your Hometown from The Item and The Landmark?

The Item and The Landmark put on Best of Your Hometown, an event tied to Clinton, Massachusetts, in which readers vote for local picks. The event runs on the organizer's own event page, so the page carries the round dates, the vote links and the winners notice. The program covers local best-of picks rather than sports, which sets it apart from the athlete polls in the wider guide.

The name points to a hometown angle, and the event timeline shows a nomination stage followed by a voting stage. Readers therefore meet the event in two parts, and each part has its own dates.

The quick facts table gives the core details, and each value comes from the program listing. The later sections cover the dated rounds, the mechanic, neighboring Massachusetts listings and ways a local business can prepare.

What dates are confirmed for the 2025 edition?

The listing confirms runs for 2024 and 2025. The 2025 timeline is the fully dated run in the listing, and it shows each round with its exact days. Those days are the anchor for any planning, while the 2026 round has no posted dates yet.

The 2026 round dates are not yet on the event page, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Because the rounds sit in separate parts of the summer, a reader should plan around each stage on its own rather than around a single date. Reading the table from top to bottom, the nomination round opens in June, the voting round runs from late July into early August, and the winners notice arrives in September, so the calendar has three distinct checkpoints.

A business or group that missed the nomination stage in 2025 has no way to enter the voting stage on the same terms, because voting follows nominations in the listed sequence. That sequencing is the main practical point that the editions table cannot show on its own.

Anyone comparing this cycle with a later one should check the event page for new dates before assuming that the June, July and September pattern repeats.

How does a supporter take part once the rounds open?

The listing describes a nomination round followed by a voting round. A supporter first nominates a business or local choice during the nomination stage, then returns during the voting stage to cast a vote. The timeline ends with winners announced, so public results come only after the voting round closes.

The event page does not describe how many nominations a person may submit or how many votes a person may cast. Readers should read the live instructions before taking either step.

A winners notice closes the cycle in the listing, and that notice is the point at which the event is marked complete. A supporter who wants to know how a result was reached should look for the event's own explanation on the page, since the listing does not describe the tally method in detail.

Readers who revisit the event after the winners notice will see the completed timeline, which is the clearest account the listing offers of how the summer unfolded. Keep the nomination and voting stages separate when summarizing the event for anyone else.

How does this ballot compare with other Massachusetts best-of listings?

The Massachusetts listings in this guide are the Boston-area best-of ballots, a Boston Magazine edition, a Cape Cod ballot, a central Massachusetts community choice award, a South Shore ballot and a Boston.com readers listing. Each carries its own name and route. The Boston listings are tied to a Boston market, while this one is tied to Clinton.

The nearest sibling by format is the Central Mass Community Choice Awards listing, because both use a community-facing award name. Readers should still treat the two as separate ballots with their own dates, since a shared format does not mean a shared calendar.

A reader who lands on this page from a Boston search should note that the Boston-area listings describe their own markets, so the comparison is useful for understanding how Massachusetts best-of ballots are arranged rather than for swapping one event for another.

How can a local business prepare for the nomination round?

A local business can prepare by reading the 2025 timeline now and marking the nomination dates for the next cycle once the organizer posts them. The listing describes no outside promotion, so any preparation is limited to the organizer's own timeline and rules.

Ideas for building local attention are set out in the get more votes online guide. Paid help is described on the buy votes online page in general terms only. Whether any help is permitted is a question for the organizer's rules and the legal overview.