Readers' Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Readers' Choice Awards are and who runs them

The Readers' Choice Awards are Living Magazine's Best Of program for North Dakota. Unlike the newspaper-run and platform-run ballots that operate in the same state, this one lives entirely on the publisher's own website. There is no third-party contest host, no separate voting domain, and no nomination round on another company's site. The magazine states the premise plainly: "Each year, online voting is conducted throughout all of the Living Magazine communities to determine which businesses YOU think are The Best!"

That wording tells you the three things that define the ballot. It is a public vote, so the outcome is decided by whoever shows up and submits. It is scoped to the magazine's own communities, so a business outside the publication's coverage area is not competing here. And it is a business award, in the best-of vertical, meaning the units on the ballot are local companies rather than people, teams or photos.

The host matters practically as well as cosmetically. Because the program runs on livingmagazine.net, every rule, date and category list a supporter needs comes from the publisher itself, not from a contest platform with its own standardized rulebook. The Best Of program is one of Living Magazine's recurring reader-facing features, published under the magazine's own masthead.

The dated record: which editions are confirmed and when the vote runs

Four editions of the program are confirmed: 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. The 2025 cycle is the one whose page is currently live, and its title, "2025 Best Of Readers' Choice Winners," says what that page now holds: results. The magazine's own language confirms the rhythm behind those years, stating that the online vote is conducted each year, which is what makes this an annual program rather than a one-off promotion.

On timing, the cycle falls in the March to May span. That is the window the program's activity occupies, though the page currently live presents winners rather than an open ballot, which is what you would expect once a cycle has concluded. The exact day voting opens and the exact day it closes are not printed on the winners page, and neither is the date a new cycle's form goes up. Those dates change shape from year to year on a publisher-run ballot like this, so the live page on the magazine's domain is where each cycle's dates must be read.

Living Magazine has also not printed the per-person voting rule or the eligibility terms for the current cycle on the page linked here; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Everything else on this page rests on what the publisher has put in the open: four consecutive confirmed years, an annual stated intent, and a results page for the most recent cycle.

How a supporter votes in the Readers' Choice Awards today

The mechanic is deliberately simple, which is typical of a publisher-run Best Of ballot. A supporter visits livingmagazine.net, opens the Best Of Readers' Choice page, and votes for the business they want in the category that fits it. There is no account on an outside platform, no app download, and no separate nomination phase on a different domain. The vote, the categories and the results all sit under the magazine's own roof.

Because the current address presents the 2025 winners, a supporter arriving mid-cycle should first confirm that a voting form for the live edition has replaced or supplemented the results listing. On a publisher site the voting page and the winners page often share an address across the year, changing content as the cycle moves from voting to results. The category list for the current cycle is whatever the live form prints, so scan it rather than assuming last cycle's structure still holds.

Two practical points follow from the setup. First, since the ballot lives on the magazine's domain, a supporter who loses the link can find it through the site's own navigation or the magazine's coverage, which is more dependable than a general web search that may surface lookalike Best Of programs. Second, any verification the form asks for, such as an email confirmation, is part of the publisher's tallying, so a half-finished submission may not count. Complete the form as printed and let the magazine's own process handle the rest.

How this ballot sits beside North Dakota's other Best Of programs

North Dakota has no shortage of Best Of ballots, and this one differs from its neighbours on the host question. The Bismarck Tribune runs Bismarck Tribune Best of the Best through a newspaper's contest operation, and the CommunityVotes family runs separate city programs for Bismarck, Fargo, Grand Forks and Minot on a shared platform. There is also Best of the Best - Best of the Midwest, a regional program that reaches into the state.

The Readers' Choice Awards stand apart because Living Magazine is both the publisher and the host. A business competing here is answering to the magazine's readership across its communities, not to a single city's ballot or a newspaper's circulation area. That changes the practical arithmetic for a business deciding where to focus: a win here signals standing with the magazine's reader base, while a CommunityVotes or Tribune win signals standing in a named city or with that paper's audience.

The contrast also matters for rules. Platform-run ballots tend to publish standardized limits, while a publisher's own program sets its own terms, and Living Magazine's terms for the current cycle are not spelled out on the winners page. A business weighing several of these programs should read each ballot's live rules separately, because a habit that is fine on one may not match what another publisher allows.

Strengthening support in a publisher-run Best Of vote

Support in this program comes down to reaching the magazine's readers and making the ask specific. Because the ballot is organized by business category, the strongest request names the business and the category in the same breath, so a supporter lands on the right line and does not abandon the form. Sharing the direct link to the magazine's Best Of page, rather than a search result, keeps people out of the lookalike programs that surround this one in the state.

On outside help, the honest position is that the magazine's current rules on solicited or automated voting are not printed on the winners page, so a business should read the live ballot's terms before spending anything on promotion. What is always true is that a publisher tallies what its own form accepts, and submissions that fail the form's checks do not count. For a plain-language walkthrough of legitimate promotion, start with our votes guide, and for the service side see our award votes page.