Your Official The State’s Best Resource

The State’s Best invites, engages, and allows you, our audience, to recognize the best businesses, organizations and people in our area. Our focus is on businesses and professionals who support, serve and do business in the Columbia, SC area.

Nominations and voting will take place at VoteTheState.com.

Nomination surveys require registration of basic information from the submitter for when we need to clarify an entry. We do offer you the opportunity to share your name and email with us so that we can keep you up to date on the program. You may submit your nominees in any given topic area and return to complete the survey any time before deadline. Registration may be necessary in the voting phase to promote fair voting. You may be asked for your name and email address.

Nominations begins at 12PM on Monday May 6 and end at 5PM on Friday, May 17. We rely on our audience to supply us with the names of outstanding people, businesses and establishments in each of the 220+ categories. Once the nominees are finalized, our audience is asked to vote on one choice in each category. Per our guidelines, you are allowed to nominate without limits. During voting, you can vote once every 24 hours. Our audience and business owners nominate their favorites by selecting one of 11 topic areas (Eat & Drink, Education, Financial, Health & Beauty, Home & Garden, Law, Motors, Real Estate, Services, Shopping, Things to Do). Nominees should be individuals and businesses that serve the Columbia, SC area. Nominating is as simple as entering a name and city in text entry fields. It’s best, but not required, to provide additional information on the nominee so that we can verify them (Phone number, address, URL). Businesses with multiple locations will appear as a single nomination for the voting phase, unless otherwise specified by the business. Business associates and advertisers of The State and any other owner-affiliated company are not given special treatment, including but not limited to our presenting sponsor. ​Users are not required to nominate in all categories, but must submit the nomination form by hitting the "submit" button at the bottom of the page. Users are permitted to nominate a single business in more than one category.

For a category to qualify for the ballot, there must be a minimum of 5 separate businesses that are competing for votes. If someone is nominated in a category that they do not qualify for, we will make reasonable accommodations to move the nominee to a similar category. Nominees will then be moved to the voting ballot.

Businesses, organizations or individuals that are nominated by our audience will be placed on our ballot after they are verified. Should a business earn enough votes to be in the top two they may be required to complete a simple online questionnaire with basic business information including name, location(s), year established, business hours, phone number, web address (if any) and submit or make available a photo of the business, organization or individual. There is no cost or obligation to participate. Don't forget to download your free promotional assets to use on your website, social media, and place of business to help promote yourself to customers and friends as a nominee during the voting period!

No. All nominations and voting are done through our website and links to our voting platform at VoteTheState.com.

Nominations and votes are tabulated by a third-party. The State and its affiliates do not know the results of the contest until after the votes are tabulated. In each category, our audience votes on their favorite nominee. You are permitted to vote in each category once per day. Businesses, institutions, individuals and schools are encouraged to promote the contest in order to gain nominations and/or votes. Competitive advertising, special offers, and campaigns are permitted; however, The State at its sole discretion reserves the right to exclude from the competition any businesses or individuals that engage in activities intended to “rig” or “fix” the voting process. Votes that are suspect may be disqualified in the count. Use of bots, robotic, repetitive, automatic, programmed, vote exchange websites, vote “farming”, scripts or other automated means designed to circumvent “one ballot per person per day” rule, are not allowed. Contestants discovered using these methods for vote acceleration are subject to suspected votes being disqualified without notice, and the jeopardy of the Contestant being completely disqualified and removed from the competition. Contestants risk disqualification if they use promotions involving quid pro quo strategies, such as, but not limited to "vote for us, and we’ll enter you into a drawing" or "vote for us, and we’ll give you a discount." These approaches create an unfair advantage by incentivizing votes, which goes against the contest guidelines and can result in disqualification to ensure a level playing field for all participants. Business associates and advertisers of The State and any other owner-affiliated company are not given special treatment, including but not limited to our presenting sponsor.

All nominations have to be verified prior to being placed on the final ballot. During the nomination process, we welcome all submissions. Our ballot is a closed ballot. However, we will consider late entries into an established category by request. All late entries must be emailed to Support@VotedtheStatesBest.com or use our Contact Form for consideration.

The names of the winners will be posted and announced on Sunday, September 22, 2024 on VotedtheStatesBest.com and honored in our The State’s Best special winners' magazine. In the event of a tie in any category, more than one winner or runner-up may be awarded.

The State’s Best and the unique logos are the property of The State and may only be used with express, written permission. Logos are licensed to winners at a marketing spend or direct payment of $1,495 or more. The State’s Best merchandise does not count toward the logo license spend. Contact us to request your logo.