Best in show

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I guess I can consider myself lucky that it’s not the middle of September yet. That’s the time when my phone starts ringing incessesantly as people try to figure out how serious we are about kicking cheaters out of our Biggest Little Best of Northern Nevada readers’ poll. Let me tell you upfront and maybe save you a phone call: We’re serious.

This year, we’ve made a change. While we still don’t allow you to send in more than five entries from any single address, we’re also requiring that every entry have 25 legitimate category entries filled out. In other words, if someone puts the name of a particular business in a bunch of categories where it wouldn’t naturally fit, we’re going to kick out the ballot. Also, if someone only fills in two or three categories, the ballot won’t even be counted.

Categories that have less than 25 legitimate entries will not be included in the issue in which we announce the winners of the Biggest Little Best of Northern Nevada readers’ poll.

We still encourage everyone to get all their friends and associates to vote for them using any means—social networking, auto-dialers, sandwich board wearers, billboards, television and radio commercials—at their disposal to get votes. It’s like the Reid-Angle Senate race, only people can actually be excited about one of the winners.

However, this readers’ poll has gotten so big that’s it’s hard for our tiny staff to wrap our arms around. But rather than cutting categories, we’re going to try to enhance accuracy. We have more than a thousand respondents every year, and somebody gets to go through and figure out all the different ways to spell … well, pick any name of any individual or business in this city. Why do we put ourselves through this? Well, it’s like the guy who kept banging his head against the brick wall: “It feels so good when we’re finished.”

So log onto our website and vote: www.newsreview.com/reno/ballot/bestofreno10.