Readers Choice Story: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Readers Choice Story program is and who runs it

Readers Choice Story is a public-vote award attached to Our State, a magazine published in North Carolina. The ballot invites the magazine's audience to choose a favorite story of the year from the pieces Our State has run, and the voting page sits on the magazine's own domain, with no outside polling service involved. The confirmed ballot address is https://www.ourstate.com/readers-choice-2013-story/, which is the 2013 edition of the program and the earliest landing point for this vote.

Our State describes its own mission in plain terms: with every issue, the magazine aims to tell stories that convey the essence of the people and places that make North Carolina unique. The readers choice program is an extension of that mission, handing the judgment back to the audience and letting them say which piece of the year's work mattered most. The magazine's publishing roots reach back to 1933, when The State's first issue went out, so the readers poll rides on a publication with a long institutional history behind it.

Because the ballot is hosted in-house, there is no third-party platform branding, no external login screen and no platform round structure of the kind you see on commercial contest services. Everything a supporter needs, from the ballot form to the results announcement, stays inside the magazine's own channels. The table below gathers the fixed details in one place.

The dated history for this readers poll

Confirmed editions of Readers Choice Story fall in nine years: 2013, 2014, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and then 2025. The first two editions sit at the start of the last decade, and after that the timeline resumes in 2019 and runs unbroken through 2025, which is the most recent confirmed edition. The program is treated as annual on the strength of that recent stretch.

The December period is the anchor for the results phase. Our State has pointed readers to ourstate.com and the magazine's Facebook page at the end of December to announce outcomes, which is why this program's live activity clusters at the close of the calendar year rather than mid-year like many community ballots. What the printed materials do not carry is an opening day and a closing day for the voting itself, so the precise window, the category roster and any rule on repeat submissions stay unknown; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

One more structural note matters for anyone reading the 2013 address: that year's invitation asked readers to vote for their favorite cover, story, video, recipe and photo essay of the year, framing the readers choice effort as a multi-part ballot in which the story category is the piece this page tracks. Whether the magazine keeps that full spread of options in every later edition, or narrows the ballot back to a single story vote, is decided fresh each cycle by the editorial team and shows up only on the ballot of the year in question.

How a supporter votes today

The literal mechanic is simple: a reader visits the readers choice page on Our State's website, finds the story ballot for the current year, picks a favorite published story and submits the choice. Because the host is the magazine's own site, the form follows whatever convention the magazine uses rather than a commercial polling platform's interface. There is no platform account requirement described for this program and no third-party ballot branding to work through.

The practical complication is navigation. The confirmed address holds the 2013 label, so a supporter arriving cold may land on a historical edition instead of the live one. From the 2013 page, the magazine's navigation and its Facebook announcements are the routes to whichever edition is currently running. During December, when the results phase lands, the magazine explicitly directs readers to ourstate.com and to its Facebook page, so those two channels are the reliable way to find a live ballot near the close of the year.

What a supporter should not assume is a repeat-voting rule. No published limit on how many times the same person may submit appears in the material behind this page, and no eligibility statement does either. Treat the ballot's own text as the only rulebook: if the form states a frequency limit, it binds; if it is silent, the magazine's editorial team controls enforcement and has not said how here. A genuine vote cast by a real reader, submitted through the live form during the open window, is the one action this program is built to accept.

How this ballot sits beside its North Carolina neighbours

North Carolina has a busy best-of scene, and Readers Choice Story is the odd one out in an instructive way. Its sibling programs on this site are business-facing community ballots: Best of North Carolina, the Daily Reflector Best Of Pitt County, Best of Chowan County, Best of Haywood, the Fayetteville Community's Choice Awards and the Bob Awards run by Charlotte Magazine. Those six ask readers to pick favorite local businesses across town or county lines, and most run on commercial contest platforms with nomination rounds and category grids.

This program instead turns the lens inward on the magazine itself. The thing being voted on is a piece of Our State's own editorial work, the story of the year, not a restaurant or a repair shop. That changes the supporter base: rather than businesses rallying their customers, the natural constituency is the magazine's readership, people who follow North Carolina writing and want to reward a specific piece. It also explains the in-house host, since a publisher ranking its own work has little reason to rent a third-party ballot.

The practical takeaway for a reader comparing these programs is that advice written for the business ballots, about nomination rounds and category counts, transfers poorly here. If you want the state's business-vote landscape, start with Best of North Carolina or the Charlotte Magazine Best of the Best Awards. For the magazine's own editorial poll, this page and the live ballot are the reference points.

Strengthening support for a story on this ballot

Support in this program means moving the magazine's actual audience, which rewards a different playbook from a business ballot. The story options are editorial pieces, so the people likeliest to vote are those who read the piece and remember it. A practical push starts there: share the specific story alongside the ballot link, so a reader moves from memory to action in one step. Because Our State promotes results through its own site and Facebook page at the end of December, matching your outreach to the magazine's own seasonal rhythm puts your request in front of readers when voting is already on their minds.

The organizer's stated posture is thin here rather than strict: no published rules text governs outside help, vote caps or frequency for this program, which means the magazine's editorial judgment fills the silence. The safe line is straightforward, encourage real people to cast real votes and let the ballot form do its job. Anything that looks like automated submission carries a risk the magazine has never had to spell out, because no platform vendor's rulebook applies to an in-house form. For background on how support campaigns work across public ballots generally, the award votes guide covers the terrain without overstating what any organizer will tolerate.