The rulebook.
Published, fixed for the year, audited.

The same five dates every year

Getting on a ballot

1. Any listed business can be nominated, free. A homeowner nominates a business they hired, or the business nominates itself. Nomination costs nothing and no plan is required.
2. Nominees must pass the five automatic checks. Real business, matching name, active state license where the trade needs one, no current suspension, and a working way to reach them. A business that passes is an eligible nominee. A paid plan never substitutes for a check.
3. Every trade starts statewide, then gets more local as nominations grow. A category opens at the most local level that has at least five eligible nominees: city first, then county, then the whole state. "Best Plumber in Lutz" exists only once five eligible Lutz plumbers are nominated. Fewer than five means that place rolls up to the next level that year.
4. Levels are set by the numbers on April 30 and frozen. When nominations close, each trade's level in each place is set automatically from the nomination counts, by the rule above. Ballots are announced May 1. Nothing is added, merged, split or renamed until the next contest year.
5. Affiliated businesses are labeled. Any business connected to Forty-Second Street, Inc. is marked on the ballot and on its profile.

Casting a vote

1. Adults who live in the area. You register with your email, home ZIP code and street. We confirm the email, check the ZIP against the category's area, and use the street to tell one household from another. Throwaway email addresses are refused.
2. One home, one vote per category. Repeat registrations from the same household are merged into one.
3. One vote counts on its own. Your first ballot is the race you chose. You may then vote in up to four more races near you, offered closest first: same city, then county, then state. Those are optional. "I haven't used any of these" is always an answer.
4. No prizes for voting. Ever. We do not offer, and businesses may not offer, any prize, discount, gift or entry in exchange for a vote. That would make it a sweepstakes, and it would make the award worthless.
5. Businesses, their staff and their competitors may not vote in their own category. We check registrations against business records and remove those votes.

What a nominee may and may not do

How winners are decided

1. Most verified votes wins. Three places per category. Each category names a 1st place, a 2nd place and a runner-up, in order of verified votes. Ties go to the business with more verified homeowner reviews on the site; a remaining tie is a shared place.
2. Fraud is removed before counting. Duplicate households, unconfirmed emails, votes from outside the area and votes tied to a business are discarded. We do not announce the discarded count per business.
3. Too few votes, no winner. A category with fewer than 25 verified votes has no winner that year. A fake award is worse than none.
4. Every placing business is checked by a person before November 1. After voting closes, a person looks up the license and insurance of the top three in every category. A business that fails is removed, and the next business in vote order moves up. The same rule applies to everyone.
5. An outside auditor reviews the count. An independent reviewer, named on this page each year, checks the removals and the totals before November 1. Their summary is published here the same week.
6. Winners get a free digital badge. It names the year, the place and the trade. Plaques, signs, decals and the logo license are optional products. Buying nothing never changes a result, and no business is ever required to buy anything to display its win.
7. Sponsors are excluded from what they sponsor. A sponsor of a state edition cannot win any category in that edition. Sponsorship is labeled wherever it appears.

From local winner to State and National Champion

The best local winners rise. Nobody picks them, including us. A published formula does, using the same frozen, audited vote count.

1. Vote share, not vote totals. A big city always casts more votes than a small town, so champions are ranked by the share of verified votes each winner earned in its own category. Winning 62% of the votes in Lutz beats winning 41% in Tampa.
2. A minimum number of votes. A local winner needs at least 50 verified votes in its own category to be considered for State Champion, and every State Champion is eligible for National Champion.
3. Published tie-breakers. A tie goes to the higher verified homeowner review rating on the site, then to more total verified votes.
4. Computed, not chosen. Champions are calculated automatically from the frozen results on October 15 and reviewed by the auditor with everything else. Paying for any plan, kit or package never changes who becomes a champion.

Plain answers

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