Bestoftn2016: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Best of Tennessee Readers' Choice Awards are and who runs them

The Bestoftn2016 ballot is the entry point for the Best of Tennessee Readers' Choice Awards, a readers' choice program run by The Tennessee Magazine. The magazine is the member publication of the Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association, and the copyright line on its results pages names the association directly. Unlike many readers' choice contests that sit on a commercial voting platform, this program is published on tnmagazine.org, the magazine's own domain, so the magazine controls the form, the dates and the results coverage end to end.

The ballot covers all of Tennessee instead of any one city. That makes it a business-to-consumer readers' choice award in the truest sense: the audience is the magazine's readership across the state, and the businesses nominated serve readers anywhere in it. The 2016 results announcement quotes ballots "nominating the best food, attractions and accommodations our state has to offer," which puts the program squarely in the dining, travel and lodging space.

This table gathers the program's fixed details.

Because the host is the magazine itself, every instruction a supporter needs lives on the magazine's pages, and any change to categories or dates appears there first.

Dated facts: editions, the 2026 window and what is not published

Start with what a nominated business actually needs to know and work backwards. The Best of Tennessee Readers' Choice Awards ran in every year from 2016 through 2025, ten cycles in all, with each year between them confirmed. The magazine's own results page anchors the start of that run, thanking everyone who submitted entries to the 2016 awards and reporting that the staff received "hundreds of online and mail-in ballots." That 2016 announcement is the earliest documented edition and the source of the program's full name.

For the live cycle, the nomination phase runs through September 2026. The magazine's page proves the month but not the exact opening and closing days, and it shows no later platform rounds for the cycle either, because no promotion entry for this market exists on any external contest platform. The ballot sits at tnmagazine.org, so any second round the 2026 cycle adds would appear on the magazine's pages rather than anywhere else.

Three things the organizer does not publish ahead of a cycle matter to a business planning around this ballot. The magazine prints no full category roster, no exact opening and closing days, and no per-supporter voting rule on the results page this guide quotes; only the month of the nomination window is proven. Readers who need any of those details should confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

What the history does prove is persistence. Ten consecutive edition years with results coverage after each one is a longer documented run than most statewide readers' choice programs can show, and it means a win carries weight with a readership that has seen the ballot before.

How a supporter votes on the Best of Tennessee ballot today

The literal mechanic comes from the magazine's own pages. In the documented 2016 edition, supporters participated in two ways: online ballots and mail-in ballots. The results announcement confirms both channels in a single sentence, so a supporter could either fill in the form on tnmagazine.org or post a paper ballot to the magazine. The online form is the channel the live site carries, and it is where the current cycle's nomination window sits.

On the online ballot, a supporter names the businesses they want to recognize. The 2016 quote shows readers writing in the best food, attractions and accommodations the state offers, which means the supporter performs the work of typing a business name into the fields the form provides rather than ticking a pre-built list. That detail matters to a nominated business: if customers cannot spell the business name the way the ballot expects, the nomination may not land where the owner intends.

On frequency, the only printed description comes from outside the magazine. A Tennessee travel directory that covers readers' choice voting describes ballots where a voter can cast one vote each day for each company they wish to vote for. The magazine's own ballot page does not restate that rule, and the directory's wording may describe a different Tennessee ballot, so the live form's instructions alone settle how many times one person can participate.

The sequence, then, is simple: open the ballot during the September window, fill in the businesses, submit, and watch the magazine's pages for results, as the 2016 cycle's "The results are in..." announcement shows.

How this ballot sits beside its Tennessee neighbours

Tennessee readers' choice voting splits into two shapes, and this program is the statewide shape. The Best of Tennessee Readers' Choice Awards covers the whole state under one publisher, while most of its neighbours answer to a single city. The BroadwayWorld Memphis Awards and the BroadwayWorld Nashville Awards cover theatre audiences in their respective cities, and the CommunityVotes Chattanooga ballot runs a nominate-then-vote structure for Chattanooga businesses.

The newspaper-style contests sit closer in format. The Chattanooga Times Free Press Best of the Best and Cityview Best of the Best (Knoxville) are both publisher-run readers' choice ballots like this one, but each is anchored to its own city's market. The Knoxville HBA Parade of Homes is a different animal altogether, a builder association event rather than a general readers' choice award.

Three things separate the magazine's ballot from all six. First, it is statewide, so a restaurant in one part of the state and a mountain cabin rental compete in the same program rather than in separate city editions. Second, the form is published on tnmagazine.org, not on a contest platform, which means the magazine's brand carries the ballot. Third, its documented run starts in 2016 with mail-in participation, a legacy shape that the platform-hosted neighbours do not share. A business deciding where to spend effort should match its customer base to the ballot's geography before anything else.

Strengthening support for a Best of Tennessee nomination

A business chasing support in this ballot works within a narrow window and a simple form. The nomination phase runs through September 2026, so the push has to land inside that month, and the write-in style of the form means supporters need the business's exact name. Put the name in front of customers on receipts, counter cards and social posts during the window, and ask them to fill in the same fields the same way each time.

The magazine publishes no statement about outside help or purchased support on the ballot page this guide quotes, so no organizer rule exists to lean on either way. What is safe is what the ballot itself supports: genuine customers filling in the form, once each, inside the window. A pattern of identical submissions from outside the readership is the kind of thing any publisher-run ballot can discount when it tallies results, and the magazine's staff counts the ballots itself, as the 2016 announcement describing hundreds of received ballots makes clear.

For tactics that transfer across readers' choice ballots, including timing reminders and wording the ask, see our votes guide. The legality question behind any outside help is covered separately on its own page.