Bestofclarendon2025: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of Clarendon is and who runs it

The Sumter Item, the daily newspaper serving the Sumter, South Carolina area, runs Best of Clarendon, a readers' choice ballot for Clarendon County. The 2025 edition carries the full title Best of Clarendon 2025 and asks readers to name the county's best in restaurants, business, medical, auto, education and community. The ballot lives on the newspaper's own site at https://theitem.com/bestofclarendon2025/, not on a third-party voting platform, so the paper controls the form, the category pages and the results announcement itself.

The paper's ballot text states the scale plainly: readers vote for the Best of Clarendon across a lineup the paper groups under restaurants, business, medical, auto, education and community. The category pages on the ballot itself are the only place the full lineup is printed. Winners come from Manning and the surrounding area, and the paper celebrates them at a Red Carpet Event, which gives the program a public, in-person finish rather than a quiet online result.

For a local business, the practical meaning is direct. A mention in restaurants, medical, auto or education puts a Clarendon County name in front of the Item's readership, and the printed ballot page is the single place where that support happens. The whole experience lives under one domain, which also means every rule that matters, from eligibility to any vote limit, is a rule the paper itself publishes or leaves off; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The dated facts behind the ballot

Best of Clarendon is an annual program with a long confirmed run. Editions ran in 2022, again in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and once more in 2026, each carried on The Sumter Item's own domain under the bestofclarendon address pattern. That five-year stretch makes this one of the longer-lived county-level readers' choice ballots in the paper's coverage area, and it means a business building support for the 2026 cycle is joining a program its customers have likely seen before.

The voting window falls in September. For the 2026 cycle, the window runs September 1 through September 30, which places the live ballot at the start of the fall rather than the end of the summer tourist season. The paper has not published nomination-round dates or the date of the Red Carpet Event that closes the cycle, so supporters and nominees alike should treat the September window as the anchor and watch the ballot page for the rest.

A 2027 edition would follow the same pattern the last five cycles set. Because every confirmed edition has run on the same domain and under the same program name, the practical habit for a returning nominee is simple: keep the ballot address, check it when September arrives, and read whatever category lineup and rules the paper prints for that year's cycle before asking a single customer for a vote.

How a supporter casts a Best of Clarendon vote

Voting here is a straightforward public ballot carried on theitem.com, the paper's own domain. A supporter opens https://theitem.com/bestofclarendon2025/ during the September window, moves through the category pages, and selects a favorite in each category where they have one. Because the ballot spans restaurants, business, medical, auto, education and community, a single household can realistically fill out picks across many lines, from a favorite Manning restaurant to a trusted local mechanic.

Submission happens on theitem.com itself. The Sumter Item has not published whether voting requires an account, a subscription or nothing at all, so the live form is the authority: whatever it asks for at the submit step is the requirement for that cycle. The same goes for repeat visits. No published rule states how often one person may return, which is why the honest advice is to vote as the form permits and stop there.

What happens after the window closes is the part that separates this program from a bare online poll. The paper celebrates winners from Manning and the surrounding area at a Red Carpet Event, so a nomination carries a visible payoff in front of the community, not just a position on a webpage. For a nominee, that event is also a natural moment to thank the customers who voted, which feeds the following year's cycle.

Where this ballot sits among South Carolina readers' choice programs

South Carolina has an unusually deep bench of best-of ballots, and Best of Clarendon occupies a specific niche in it: the county scale. Statewide and city programs cover bigger audiences, but a Clarendon County business competes against its actual neighbors here, which is exactly the comparison its customers make. The nearest large-scale relative is the Best of South Carolina Awards, which runs at the state level rather than the county level.

Elsewhere in South Carolina, readers' choice programs answer to different publishers and different cities. The Best of Charleston ballot belongs to the Charleston City Paper, Charleston Magazine's Best Of runs from the magazine side, and Columbia carries two separate programs, Best of Columbia from Columbia Metropolitan and Best of Columbia from Free Times. The BroadwayWorld South Carolina Awards covers theater rather than local business.

What makes the Clarendon ballot distinct is the combination of publisher and finish. It is run by a working daily newspaper on its own domain, and it ends in a Red Carpet Event honoring winners from Manning and the surrounding area. A nominee deciding where to spend a season of outreach should treat each of these programs as its own campaign, because none of them shares a ballot, a window or a rule set with any other.

Strengthening support on this ballot

Support in Best of Clarendon compounds across categories. A Clarendon County business that fits several of the paper's category lines can ask each customer group to vote where that customer genuinely has an opinion, which spreads real support across the ballot instead of concentrating it in one crowded race. The September window rewards an early start, because a request made in the first week has a month to circulate.

The Sumter Item has not published terms addressing outside vote services or organized vote pushes for this program, so the safe line is the one the ballot itself draws: votes count when they are cast on the paper's own site during the window. Tactics that work with that shape, from in-store reminders to social posts pointing at the ballot address, are covered in our votes guide, and the legal position on paid support is laid out at is buying votes legal.