Best Of The City: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best Of The City is and who runs it

Best Of The City is a public-vote readers' program run by Cincinnati Magazine, a publication serving Cincinnati, Ohio. Within the best-of field, this ballot invites the magazine's audience to celebrate local favorites, and it closes each cycle by tying the results to the flagship December issue, where past and present Best Of The City winners are gathered together. That December anchor is the most distinctive structural fact about the program, because it gives the ballot a printed milestone rather than leaving it as a web-only event.

The hosting arrangement is unusual among Ohio readers' choice ballots. Cincinnati Magazine keeps the vote inside its own domain instead of routing it through a separate voting portal, which means the ballot pages carry the magazine's own masthead, its social links and its navigation. Confirmed ballots exist for 2019, 2024 and 2025 under year-specific addresses on cincinnatimagazine.com, so the live form for any cycle is found on the magazine's domain rather than a separate voting portal.

The facts below are the confirmed frame for the program.

Because the organizer and the host are the same publication, anything a voter reads on the ballot comes from the publisher directly, without an intermediary platform's own rules layered on top.

The dated record: which editions ran and when

Four edition years are confirmed for Best Of The City: 2019, 2022, 2024 and 2025. The 2019 ballot is the earliest confirmed edition, and the program returned after a gap through the early years of the decade. The most recent confirmed run is 2025, and a further edition is expected to follow it if the annual pattern holds.

The December connection is the one dated fact the program publishes itself. Cincinnati Magazine describes the ballot as celebrating the end of the year with past and present Best Of The City winners from the flagship December issue, so each cycle's results surface in print in December. What that description does not cover is timing within the year: the magazine has not printed an opening day, a closing day or a nominations round for this program in the material reviewed, so those dates confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two other gaps sit alongside the timing. First, the category roster is read from each year's own ballot rather than from a standing list, and no category slate has been published across cycles. Second, the magazine prints no vote cap, no one-per-day rule and no eligibility text with this program, so a supporter's limits are whatever the live form enforces at the moment of voting. None of these absences is unusual for a publisher-run ballot, but all of them matter to an entrant planning a campaign, and none can be filled in from the confirmed year list.

The practical summary: four confirmed years, a December results anchor, and everything else read from the live ballot.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot

Voting in Best Of The City happens on cincinnatimagazine.com, the magazine's own domain, so the supporter's path is short. During an active cycle, the year-specific ballot page carries the form: a reader opens the page, reads the categories printed for that cycle, and submits picks for the Cincinnati favorites they want to support. The program uses no outside voting portal to register with, no separate account address, and no sign-up step that the program's published material mentions.

The first practical obstacle is finding a live round. Because the ballot pages are year-specific, a person arriving between cycles lands on a page celebrating a past December issue rather than an open form. The 2019, 2024 and 2025 addresses all sit on the magazine's domain, and the live edition for the current year replaces or joins them when the window opens. Typing cincinnatimagazine.com and following the site's own navigation is the reliable route to whatever form is active.

The second practical question is repeat submissions. The magazine has printed no rule on whether a single reader may cast additional picks, so any limit exists only in the behavior of the live form. A supporter who votes once and moves on is always within whatever the ballot allows; a supporter planning repeated rounds should read the form's own prompts first, since the ballot enforces its own rules at submission.

Finally, results do not appear on the ballot page alone. Each cycle closes into the flagship December issue, where the magazine gathers past and present winners. A supporter wanting to see the outcome waits for that issue rather than a live results dashboard.

How this ballot sits beside its Ohio neighbours

Cincinnati is one of the best-served best-of markets in Ohio, and Best Of The City is only one of several public-vote programs competing for the same readers. The most direct local rival is Best of Cincinnati, a separate readers' choice ballot from a different publisher in the same city. A Cincinnati business that wants year-round visibility in local ballots will encounter both, and success in either program earns nothing in the companion ballot.

Cincinnati Magazine also operates its own Readers' Choice program under the same publisher, which makes Best Of The City one of two house ballots on cincinnatimagazine.com rather than the magazine's only vote. Elsewhere in the state, the field includes 97.1 The Fan Pizza Madness Columbus, the Akron Community's Choice Awards, the Best in Ohio Business Awards, the statewide Best of Ohio ballot and the CBUS Top Picks Community Choice Awards in Columbus.

What distinguishes Best Of The City within that field is the December print tie-in and the self-hosted ballot. Most Ohio readers' programs lean on a third-party voting platform; this one keeps everything inside the publisher's domain and closes into the flagship December issue, giving winners a printed placement rather than a web badge alone. For an entrant, that means a win in this program has a magazine audience attached, and for a voter, it means the whole experience stays inside one publisher's site.

Strengthening support in this program without guessing at the rules

Because Best Of The City is a free public vote on the magazine's own domain, the support a nominee can build is audience support: customers, readers and neighbours who genuinely want a Cincinnati favorite named on the ballot. A business listed in a category can ask its own channels directly, in person, by email and on social accounts, and every one of those asks reaches people the ballot already welcomes. That approach needs no rule the magazine has not published.

The rule the magazine has not published is the problem. Cincinnati Magazine prints no statement on automation, outside help or vote purchasing for this program, and no vote cap or eligibility text exists in its material either. An entrant considering paid vote support therefore carries the whole risk personally: the organizer controls its own ballot, can review its own forms, and has no published commitment either way. A contest page that reads as an audience-driven push ages far better than one whose volume a publisher might question, and no disclaimer, ours included, can guarantee a win on any ballot.