Best Of Things To Look Forward To: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best Of Things To Look Forward To is and who runs it

Milwaukee Magazine, a city magazine published in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, runs Best Of Things To Look Forward To under its Best Of banner. The program is a public vote in the best-of and business vertical: outcomes are decided by supporters responding on the page rather than by a judging panel. The ballot sits at milwaukeemag.com, on the magazine's own website, which means the publisher controls the ballot directly instead of renting a slot on an outside balloting platform.

The confirmed ballot page is titled Best of Milwaukee 2017: 4 Things to Look Forward To, and it frames the vote around a short list of developments the magazine described as coming soon to Milwaukee. That framing makes this a forward-looking companion to the publisher's main readers' choice program rather than a full category-by-category survey of Milwaukee businesses. The two are separate ballots with separate pages, even though both carry the Best Of name and both come from the same Milwaukee publisher.

The table below sets out the program's fixed facts.

The dated record behind the Milwaukee Magazine ballot

Confirmed runs of the program took place in 2017, 2018, 2025 and 2026. The 2017 ballot is the edition with a printed date: it was dated October 21, 2017, which places that cycle's voting phase in October. The gap between the 2018 and 2025 edition years means the program's run has not been continuous in the material held for this page, so treat the annual label as the publisher's framing rather than a guarantee of an unbroken yearly streak.

Milwaukee Magazine's own Best Of category coverage supports the annual reading. The publisher has described its awards activity in annual terms, writing of "The fourth annual Milwaukee Magazine awards" in coverage of its design honors, and the Best Of franchise as a whole recurs on the milwaukeemag.com domain across the years the ballot has appeared.

The shape of the current cycle is the missing piece. No closing date, no nomination-round dates and no per-supporter rule for the live edition appear in the material held for this program; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The 2017 page's single-day date stamp also leaves open how long that edition's window stayed open, since the page itself does not print a separate closing date.

How a supporter votes on the Milwaukee Magazine ballot today

Voting happens as a plain public response on the publisher's page. To take part, a supporter opens the Best Of Things To Look Forward To ballot at milwaukeemag.com, reads the short list of Milwaukee developments the magazine has framed as things to look forward to, and uses the voting prompts printed on that page. There is no nomination round between a supporter and the response in the material held for this program, and no third-party balloting platform sits in front of the vote.

Since the publisher runs the ballot on its own domain, the printed text of each edition is what settles the mechanics. Milwaukee Magazine has not published an account requirement, a per-supporter daily limit or an eligibility rule alongside the confirmed ballot, so a supporter who wants to know whether repeat responses count should read the rules text on the live page for the edition they are voting in.

The practical sequence is short: find the current ballot in the magazine's Best Of section, read the featured items, respond through the on-page prompts, and return only as often as the printed rules allow. The 2017 edition's page shows the format in its clearest form, a short forward-looking list paired with a public response mechanism, and later editions have kept the program anchored to the magazine's own domain.

How this ballot sits beside its Wisconsin neighbours

Wisconsin has an unusually crowded best-of field, and Best Of Things To Look Forward To occupies a specific corner of it. Within its own publisher, the program shares the Best Of name with Best of Milwaukee Readers' Choice, the larger citywide survey that most Milwaukee supporters are looking for when they search the franchise. The two answer to the same publisher but run as separate ballots, and a vote cast on one carries no weight toward the other.

Across the state, the neighbours are Best of the Valley in Appleton, Best of Madison, the Eau Claire Reader's Choice Awards, Best of the Bay in Green Bay and Janesville CommunityVotes. Each of those is anchored to its own city and its own organizer, so none of them substitutes for the Milwaukee Magazine ballot.

What makes the Things To Look Forward To program different is its framing. Where the neighbours survey existing businesses across many categories, this ballot asks supporters to respond to a short list of developments the magazine has named as coming soon to Milwaukee, which makes it a commentary vote on the city's future rather than a ranking of established favourites.

Strengthening support for a Milwaukee Magazine Best Of entry

Support in this program flows through the same public page every other supporter uses, so the work is outreach, not mechanics. The ballot asks supporters to respond to a short list of Milwaukee developments, which means a message that explains which item a backer is choosing and why it matters to the city travels better than a bare request to click. Timing matters too: the confirmed 2017 window sat in October, and a push that lands after a cycle closes reaches nobody.

Milwaukee Magazine has not published a policy on outside help or purchased votes in the material held for this ballot, so any rule for the current edition will surface on that page when the magazine prints it. Supporters planning a larger push should read this site's votes guide for outreach methods suited to public ballots, and anyone weighing paid support can compare options on the award votes page. Whatever route a campaign takes, the magazine's printed rules for the live edition outrank anything written about past cycles.