MadFaves: Madison's Favorites: How Voting Works & How to Win

Two Madison ballots, and only one of them is write-in

isthmus.com/madfaves. That's MadFaves, Isthmus's own readers'-choice program, and it isn't the only game in Madison. Madison Magazine runs a separate ballot under its own name and its own rules. A business chasing local recognition may end up eligible for both in the same year, and treating them as one contest is the fastest way to run the wrong campaign for each.

The format difference is the whole story on the MadFaves side. There's no shared nominee list to check a name against before voting starts, since every ballot begins blank.

Why the write-in format changes the entire campaign math

A picklist ballot rewards whoever gets the most clicks on an existing option. A write-in ballot rewards whoever gets the most voters to type the exact same thing. Those are different problems, and MadFaves is squarely the second kind.

That matters most for a business with a name that's easy to abbreviate or spell two ways. A wine bar known casually as "The Yardhouse" but registered as "Yard House Wine Bar" risks splitting its own support if supporters aren't told which exact string to write. On a picklist ballot, that risk doesn't exist, because the name is fixed on the page already.

It also removes any pre-filtering. Nobody has to submit a nomination in advance to appear on MadFaves; a business simply needs enough voters willing to type its name in during the open window, whatever that window turns out to be this cycle.

What's actually confirmed about MadFaves, and what still isn't

Isthmus as organizer. Roughly 80 categories. A write-in format at isthmus.com/madfaves. Madison as the coverage area. That's the full confirmed record checked for this page, and it's worth being direct about what sits outside it.

The gaps worth naming

No exact voting window, no published vote cap, and no category-by-category breakdown appear in that record. A business planning around "MadFaves opens in spring" or "there's a five-vote daily limit" is working from assumption, not confirmed fact, and either detail should be checked directly on the live page before it shapes a campaign timeline.

None of that makes MadFaves less real. Isthmus is a long-running Madison alt-weekly, and the write-in structure is itself a confirmed, distinctive fact worth building a campaign around, even without a full rulebook attached to it.

How Isthmus actually counts a write-in vote

A voter opens a blank field, types a name, and submits it, once per category, roughly 80 times if they fill out the whole ballot. There's no verification step confirmed that checks a typed name against an official business registry, which is part of why spelling consistency carries so much weight here.

For the general mechanics behind promoting any online ballot, including a write-in one, how online contest votes work covers ground that still applies even without a fixed nominee list to point at.

Campaigning for a write-in win across Madison's neighborhoods

Downtown Madison, Williamson Street, Atwood, and Monroe Street each carry a different regular crowd, and a business in one doesn't automatically reach voters in another. Out toward Hilldale, Middleton, Fitchburg, and Sun Prairie, the audience shifts again, closer to suburban than to isthmus-core Madison.

None of that changes the core task: get real supporters to write in one exact name, correctly, during whatever window Isthmus opens. A short, printed reminder card with the precise spelling handed to regulars does more for a write-in ballot than a vague social post ever will, since the entire risk here is people meaning the right business and typing the wrong string.

Before spending budget on a push toward any Madison ballot, is buying votes legal lays out the honest boundaries, and award-style vote campaigns covers the broader mechanics of running a readers'-choice push responsibly.