Best Of Erie Voting Now Open!

The polls are officially open.

After collecting nominations for nearly a month from you, our readership, we have closed the nomination period for our Best Of Erie Awards, and now proudly present to you the complete and finalized list of nominees eligible to win.

In short, if a nominee fit the bill -- as in, it was accurate and applicable -- it made the ballot. If it wasn't -- say you nominated what you thought was a locally-made product and turns out it's actually made in Buffalo, we disqualified it from having a chance to be voted on.

See your favorite person, place, or thing in multiple categories? That's because it was nominated in each category -- and is eligible -- and could win multiple Best Of Erie honors. That is, the same establishment -- if it gets the most votes -- could take home the hardware for Best Restaurant, Best Cocktail, Best Wine List, Best Dessert, and more.

Don't see your favorite person, place, or thing on the Best Of ballot? That means it wasn't nominated; but don't fret, there's always next year.

So, how does one vote now that the polls are open?

It's simple: Visit ErieReader.com or click the link in this very column or click on the Best Of Erie image on our homepage. From there, you'll be prompted to enter your name and your email address. Don't worry; we're not looking to spam you. Instead, we'll send you a verification via email that'll confirm you're registered to vote.

That email will also contain a link to the voting polls. Once you click that, your browser will automatically open and welcome you to the polls. Then you can begin voting.

Once there, you'll see the four main Best Of Erie categories: Goods & Services; Culture & Nightlife; Food & Drink; and People & Places. You can easily navigate from one category to the next and your votes will be saved as you remain active throughout the ballot.

You'll also see a note, reading: "Each vote is placed and saved when clicking 'Place Vote'." It's as simple as that.

Second-guessing your decision later? You can go back into your ballot and change your answer before the polls close -- and you can change your answer as many times as you'd like. However, you can vote only once -- we're trying to keep things as fair as possible when it comes to the voting process -- so if you change your selection, it doesn't add a second, third, or seventh vote in the process.

Want to vote on the go? You can do that easily. The voting process is mobile-friendly, so if you're out and about and want to cast your ballot from your smartphone or tablet, you can.

The cool thing about all of this, too, is that we're giving you plenty of time to cast your Best Of Erie ballot. You have from now until 11:59 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10 to vote. Once the clock strikes midnight, the polls will be officially closed for the 2014 Best Of Erie Awards and we'll begin tallying the votes.

When you pick up our Oct. 15 issue, you'll see the top-three vote-getters published for all the available categories. We'll then announce the winners at the 2014 Best Of Erie Awards Party we're hosting Thursday, Oct. 16 (that's a hint to mark your calendars now).

We've said it before, and it bears repeating: We love our city and our region, and we love the work we get to do here at the Reader in bringing you the issues that matter and creating a forum for ideas and discussion. And we love that many of you took the time to submit thousands of nominations. Now we're looking forward to you voting on what you think is the Best Of Erie -- because after all, this city and this region belongs to all of us and we have much here to celebrate.

Happy voting!