We here at Independent World Headquarters debated postponing our annual Best of Coachella Valley readers’ poll this year.
Why? For one thing, the city magazine and the daily already do readers’ polls—and the timing of the daily’s poll usually overlaps with the timing of ours, which confuses the heck out of everyone.
For another thing … as you may have noticed, we’re in the middle of a raging pandemic, which has curtailed or shuttered many of the businesses and organizations that are featured in our poll.
However, upon further reflection, we decided not to postpone our poll—and voting is taking place now. First-round (nomination) voting will be open through Monday, Sept. 14. Go here to access the ballot, where you will fill in the blank in each category. (In other words, we have no pre-determined list of candidates.)
Why did we decide to press forward? Well, for one thing—and I say this with all due respect to the winners and everyone else otherwise involved—those other readers’ polls are kind of terrible. For our Best of Coachella Valley poll, we ask each reader to vote only once per round, because our goal is to come up with a slate of truly excellent finalists and winners. The other polls have no such prohibition, because the goal of those polls is not to get a great slate of finalists and winners—the goal is for the publications to get as much web traffic as possible from readers visiting their websites over and over again to vote.
The other reason why we pressed forward: There’s never been a more important time to shine a light on the valley’s best businesses, individuals and organizations, because so many of us are struggling right now.
The top vote-getters in the first round of voting will advance to the final round, which will take place at CVIndependent.com from Monday, Sept. 28, through Monday, Oct. 26. The Best of Coachella Valley results will be announced at CVIndependent.com on Monday, Nov. 23, and in our special December print edition. Complete rules and a list of categories can be found on the ballot page.
Thanks in advance to all of you wonderful readers who take the time to vote!
As always, thanks for reading the Coachella Valley Independent—and don’t hesitate to message me at the email address below with questions or comments.
A slightly modified version of this piece served as the September 2020 print version Note From the Editor; portions were also used in a recent Daily Digest.