AIG,

Actually, there was touch-screen voting at the booth. We had one of those fancy new iPads ready to take votes. Two years ago we had a laptop there, but it wasn't a touch-screen... this was our first year with anything like that.

The iPad was pretty cool. The few people who voted from the booth were able to look at pictures of the entries while voting too! Unfortunately the screen was kinda hard to see because we were in the sun for much of the day.

Maybe next year we can do an actual voting booth... one where you go in, pull the curtain behind you, and caste your vote in private. And then we can give out "I Voted" stickers :-)

-Jason

Lindsay,

All the restaurants and vendors were given the chance to enter when they registered for the festival. Only those who entered were eligible to win. We only had six restaurants and vendors enter the desert category -- see http://vote.thetowndish.com -- so the Master's Baker would have been a welcome addition!

Maybe they'll enter next year. I didn't get to try their cupcakes but they sound delicious!

Hi Ronny,

Sorry if you didn't agree with the winners of the contest. There were a lot of great entries, but the winners were decided solely on the number of votes submitted.

We hope to promote the contest more next year, and see if we can make it easier for more people to submit votes. I'm considering the idea of opening up the voting the day before, and letting it run for 24 hours. Does that sound like a good idea?

If anyone has any feedback about how we could improve the Choice Awards at the restaurant festival, I'm very interested to hear your ideas. Just send a message through our Contact Form.

Zoey, not sure if you've seen this yet, but there are now thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons by each comment.

Hellooooo there!