By Shane Goodman shane@dmcityview.com

Record voting spurs a few surprises

The time has come — time for one of our most anticipated issues of the year, our annual “Best of Des Moines” edition. The winners in some categories had become predictable in recent years. I guess that indicates that we, as Central Iowans, had become predictable, too. But Des Moines has changed, and so have the habits and lifestyles of the people who live here. At least some, anyway.

We drew new blood last year when we implemented online voting to the mix, which simplified the process a great deal. It also allowed us to prevent multiple votes from one person, a problem we had with the printed form from time to time. The end result in the 2007 online voting was a record number of ballots cast. That success continued, as 2008 brought an all-new record with an increase of nearly 40 percent in votes from the previous best.

There are some new winners in the contest this year. We even caught wind of some businesses actively seeking out their customers via email and asking them to vote for them. A few even provided incentives to do so. That’s smart marketing, and we applaud the efforts of businesses to get involved.

Is our reader poll a scientific survey? Not by any means, but it does represent the votes of those who are passionate about the products, services and stores they buy from. And we think that’s great.

Inevitably, we will receive comments from a handful of readers stating how wrong they feel we are in naming the winners. And, like each year, we remind these folks that we don’t name the winners. Our readers do.

A few notes on this year’s poll: There were five sections with a total of 147 questions. Those who participated in the poll could answer the questions they wanted and skip others, which allowed us to compile some interesting statistics. The question with the most votes was “best kept secret on the local restaurant scene.” The question with the least was “best Cityview staffer you would like to publicly flog.” Go figure.

Thanks for reading.

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