So we thought it would be fun to remind you about the local impact of the process that we embark on every year.

At a total of 17,502 individual voters, we proudly surpassed the number of people voting in June's primary for Santa Fe County Commission District 2 race by three times. We don't ask for photo ID in our virtual polling place, yet we try hard to prevent ballot-stuffing by making each user register with a distinct email address. Those voters made a whopping total of 250,453 choices in the 116 categories on the ballot. And the numbers come after we whittled the number of categories down from 156 last year.

The decision about which categories to cut and which ones to keep is always a hard one, and we heard from some of you who are sad that your category didn't make the list for 2016. But we are always striving to give the community a definitive list to guide their shopping, playtime, mealtime and lots in between. For the second year, we also used a two-round approach that's something like what happens in elections. First, we held a nominating period, sort of a primary election round, in February. The six nominees with the most votes in each category moved on to the final, general election ballot, with voting for the entire month of May.

So without further delay (and thanks if you are still even reading this far), turn the page and discover who came out on top.

Food & Drink

Restaurants

Food Items

Drinks

Shopping

Services

Health/ Beauty Services

Biz/Financial/Misc Services

Arts & Entertainment

Living

Santa Fe Reporter