RICHMOND, VA- Voting in Outside Magazine’s “Best Town Ever” contest closed last night with Richmond having rolled to an impressive victory over the nine other finalists. In fact, Richmond’s total of 9,315 votes received is greater than the total of the next five vote-getters combined.
Outside announced on June 12 that Richmond was among the ten finalists for its Best Town Ever award and voting opened that day using an online voting application on Outside’s Facebook page. Individuals were limited to one vote per day.
The final vote tallies were as follows:
- Richmond – 9,315 votes
- Hood River, Oregon – 2,826 votes
- Nevada City, California – 2,539 votes
- Durango, Colorado – 1,782 votes
- Asheville, North Carolina – 1,130 votes
- Missoula, Montana – 1,016 votes
- Boise, Idaho – 593 votes
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin – 365 votes
- Nashville, Tennessee – 270 votes
- Ithaca, New York – 199 votes
Despite the impressive voting total, though, Richmond will have to wait to learn whether it is the “Best Town Ever” until Outside unveils the winner on its October cover. That’s because the winning town is selected based on two criteria:
- A ranking of each finalist by number of votes.
- The creativity of user-submitted content—i.e. great photos capturing the essence of each town, and smart comments describing the why it should be called Outside’s Best Town Ever. The creativity of each town’s user-submitted material will be ranked by a team of Outside editors and those comments may be used in the coverage of each city in the magazine.
To select the ten finalists, Outside partnered with the nonprofit American Rivers to identify great places to live that have the usual dreamy quality-of-living criteria and also an active recreational engagement with nearby waterways – kayaking, fishing, boating, walking and bike paths, and riverfront parks—and a positive environmental story.
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