ColumBEST: How Voting Works & How to Win

What sets ColumBEST apart from Ohio's other reader ballots

Most best-of ballots in Ohio answer to a radio station, a chamber of commerce or a city weekly. ColumBEST answers to a magazine. It is run by (614) Magazine, the Columbus publication behind the 614now.com site, and the vote lives on that same domain, with no outside balloting service in between. That single detail changes how the ballot behaves: the category list, the dates and the results all sit in one place the publisher controls, and the winners are not just posted online but named in the May print issue of the magazine.

The scope is also broader than most siblings manage. Where a station poll might cover a single food rivalry, ColumBEST asks readers to name their favorites across a sweeping list of categories, from pizza to places to people, throughout what the publisher calls the Arch City. It is a citywide survey of Columbus, Ohio, not a niche contest.

For a business owner deciding where to spend promotion effort, that combination matters. A vote hosted by the publisher itself, with a print announcement attached, carries the magazine's own audience rather than a rented platform's traffic.

The dated history of ColumBEST

Two editions of ColumBEST are confirmed: 2024 and 2026. The publisher describes the program as its annual reader poll, and the recurrence points to 2027 as the next cycle. The 2024 ballot carried the fullest public detail: voting ran March 20th through March 25th, and the magazine said it would name this year's winners in the May issue of (614) Magazine, which hits stands at the beginning of the month.

That 2024 edition is also where the category shape comes from. The publisher described the year's ColumBEST as a massive poll whose categories ranged from pizza to places to people, inviting readers to name all of their favorite things throughout the Arch City.

What the ballot page does not settle is the fine print. The publisher has printed no per-supporter vote limit, no repeat-visit rule and no eligibility terms alongside the ballot, and each new cycle's open and close dates are set fresh by the magazine; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The same goes for the category roster: 2024's pizza-to-people lineup is the only shape the publisher has described, and a later edition may run a different list.

So the honest summary is this: an annual poll with confirmed runs in 2024 and 2026, a dated March window on file for 2024, a print announcement in May, and everything else decided edition by edition by (614) Magazine.

How a supporter votes in ColumBEST today

Casting a ballot in ColumBEST takes no special knowledge. The supporter lands on the 614now.com page for the current edition, scrolls the category list, and types or selects a favorite Columbus answer in each field they care about. In 2024 those fields stretched from pizza to places to people, so nobody is expected to fill them all; most readers vote in the handful that touch their own lives, their regular pizza spot, their favorite neighborhood hangout, the local people they follow.

Since (614) Magazine keeps the whole vote inside its own web property, no third-party voting service sits between the reader and the form. Whatever the page asks for, an email, a name, nothing at all, is visible the moment the ballot loads, and that is the definitive answer on the account question. The page states no login requirement, and it is silent on repeat participation, so the form itself is the only authority on both.

The calendar is the other thing a supporter must respect. The 2024 window ran March 20th through March 25th, a short six-day span, which is typical of a magazine poll tied to a print deadline: votes land, the issue goes to press, winners appear in May. A supporter who hears about the ballot late in the window should vote immediately rather than plan to return, because the close date arrives quickly. For the current cycle, the live page on 614now.com carries the operative dates and the operative category list.

ColumBEST beside its Ohio neighbours

Columbus readers comparing ballots have several Ohio options, and ColumBEST differs from each in a specific way. Within its own city, 97.1 The Fan Pizza Madness Columbus is a radio station's single-food bracket, narrow where ColumBEST is wide, and CBUS Top Picks Community Choice Awards runs a community-choice format in the same market. A Columbus business can appear on all three, but the audiences and the mechanics differ.

Statewide, Best of Ohio and the Best in Ohio Business Awards cover the whole state rather than one metro, so a Columbus nominee there competes against every Ohio city at once. ColumBEST keeps the field local: only Columbus answers count, which is exactly why its category list can go granular on the Arch City.

Elsewhere in the state, the Akron Community's Choice Awards serve Akron and Best of Cincinnati is that city's weekly alt-paper equivalent, the closest structural cousin ColumBEST has: a publication-run reader poll with a print heritage. The difference there is the host. Cincinnati's ballot answers to CityBeat, while ColumBEST answers to (614) Magazine and lives entirely on 614now.com.

For anyone weighing these programs against each other, the practical point is that they share no ballot, no platform and no rulebook. Support earned in one program counts for nothing in the rest, and each organizer sets its own window and its own terms.

Building real support before the ColumBEST window closes

The six-day shape of the 2024 window is the fact that should drive any support plan for ColumBEST. A short ballot rewards preparation: a Columbus business that wants votes should have its ask ready before the March window opens, with the direct 614now.com link in hand, so supporters can act the day voting starts rather than hear about it on day five.

The category breadth helps here. With fields stretching from pizza to places to people, a restaurant, a salon and a gym can each campaign in their own lane without competing against each other, and a single customer message can ask for a vote in one specific field rather than a vague show of support. Specific asks convert better than general ones in a poll this size.

On outside help, the publisher's position is nowhere on the ballot page, so nothing about purchased votes can be promised here either way. What is true is that the organizer controls the form and the results, and any support that looks irregular to a publisher runs whatever risk that publisher chooses to apply. The safer play, and the one this ballot's structure favors, is mobilizing real readers: staff, regulars and neighbors who already have opinions about the Arch City's best. Our votes guide covers outreach that fits publisher-run polls like this one.