Best of

One question, answered from the tour. No accounts, no names.

What a Best of vote is

You ask the town one question and let them answer it from the tour. Best burger. Best coffee. Best window at Christmas.

It is one vote per phone. Nobody makes an account, nobody gives a name, and nothing about the voter is kept. That is what keeps it easy enough that people actually do it.

A vote does three jobs at once: it gets people onto the tour, it gets your places talking about it and sharing it, and at the end it makes a result somebody will print and put in a window for a year.

The question

Keep it to one thing. Best burger downtown beats Best food and drink establishment. The question is the whole invitation.

The line under it carries the rules a voter needs in one breath: one vote each, voting closes on the last day of the month.

The longer box under that is for anything more you want to say, and it sits above the choices on the tour. It is the right place for who is sponsoring it, what the winner gets, and where the trophy is handed over.

The choices

Three ways to fill the ballot, and you can use all three together:

• Every place in a category puts the whole category on the vote and keeps itself right as places come and go. A restaurant that opens next week is on the ballot without you touching it.
• Pick places on the map opens the map with nothing ticked, because you are choosing five out of ninety, not deleting eighty-five.
• Or type one and press Add is for a choice that is not a place on your tour at all: a person, a float, a window, a dog.

Visitors see the running count

Three settings, and they change how the vote behaves:

• When it closes keeps it a secret until the end. This is the fairest, because an early lead will not snowball.
• All the way through makes it a race, which suits a friendly rivalry and gets people campaigning.
• Never keeps the numbers to you.

Whoever votes always sees where it stands immediately after their own vote, whatever this is set to. That is the moment they screenshot and send to the shop.

When it runs

Set the day it opens and the day it closes. Between those, and only on a published tour, the question appears on the tour's menu.

A month is a good length for a downtown vote. Long enough for word to get round, short enough that the last week is busy.

A sponsor

A sponsor's name appears on the vote itself as Brought to you by, and their website opens if it is tapped. A vote is one of the easiest things to sell, because the sponsor's name sits on something the whole town is looking at for a month.

See the votes

See the votes shows the count as it stands and gives you a page to print. That page is the thing the winner puts in the window and the thing the sponsor puts in their newsletter.

Print it on the day you announce, not a week later.

Visitors can vote, and Remove this vote

Visitors can vote off keeps every setting and every vote, and shows nobody anything. It is the switch to use if you need to stop a vote early.

Remove this vote takes the question off the tour. The votes stay counted here, so a result you announced is never lost.

Start a vote

Starts a new vote. The first thing it asks for is the question, because everything else follows from it.