How can we help?

A ballot takes votes only while the publication has it open, and there are two ways for it to be shut: the publication has not opened that stage yet, or the closing date has passed. Contests usually run in stages — nominations first, then a vote between the finalists, then the winners are published — so a page that took nominations last month may be waiting for voting to start. The ballot page says which of those it is. There is nothing we can do to reopen a closed ballot; that is the publication’s decision and their date.

Then you have, from this account, inside the current window. How often you may vote is set by the publication for its own contest — some allow one vote per category per day, some one per week, some one for the whole contest — so there is no single answer we can give you. The message on the ballot tells you which rule applies and when it resets. Daily resets at midnight and weekly on Monday, in the contest’s own time zone rather than yours, so it can turn over at an odd hour if you are travelling. Voting again in a different category is unaffected.

Your votes still count. Confirming an email address is not a condition of voting on a Laurel ballot and never has been — it helps us tell real voters apart from automated ones, and that is all it does. So if you voted and saw the ballot accept it, it is counted, confirmed or not. If you do have a confirmation email from a contest, the link in it stays good for seven days and it will arrive from the publication’s name rather than from Laurel. If you typed your address wrong there is nothing to recover — vote again from the correct address, or write to us below.

While nominations are open you can write one in — type the name into the nomination box and pick it from the suggestions, or add it if it is not there. It counts straight away. Some write-ins are held for a person at the publication to look at before they appear publicly, usually to merge two spellings of the same business, so a name may not show on the ballot the moment you add it. Once voting has started the list of finalists is fixed and nothing can be added to it.

Open any email you have had from the contest and use the unsubscribe link at the bottom, or your mail app’s own Unsubscribe button if it shows one. One click and you are off — no sign-in, no confirmation step, and the link keeps working however old the email is, so an unsubscribe link in a message from last year still works today. There is no way to unsubscribe by typing your address into a box, because that would let anybody unsubscribe anybody. If you have deleted every email, write to us below and say which contest it was.

Go to the contest’s website — the address where the ballot is, not this one — and add /claim to the end of it. Search for your business, tell us who to talk to, and you get a free media kit back: a printable flyer, a QR code, an email you can forward to customers and a couple of social posts, all pointing at your listing. No account, no password, and it costs nothing. Claiming does not change your votes and does not buy you any advantage in the contest — it tells the publication who to contact and gets you something to promote with.

The same /claim page on the contest’s website has an option for a business that is not listed. You give the name, up to three categories and a contact. Be aware of what that does and does not do: it puts your business in front of the publication, it does not put you on the ballot. Somebody there decides what appears in their contest, and whether nominations are still open at all is their call too.

Ask the publication that runs the contest — this is the one thing on this page we genuinely cannot do for you. The listing is their record in their contest, and claiming a listing does not give either us or you an edit button on it: there is no self-serve way to correct an address, change a category or remove a business, for anybody. A person at the publication makes that change. Write to us below if you cannot work out who to ask and we will point you at them, but the decision is theirs and we will not pretend otherwise.

Badge kits and web embeds are issued straight away and the download link is on the confirmation you were sent. A plaque is a physical thing and is made and posted, so it takes as long as making and posting a plaque takes. If a download will not open, or something has not arrived, write to us below with the date and the amount of the order and we will chase it.

At laurelvoting.com/admin — the link is in the footer of every page on this site. You can sign in with a password or with Google, whichever your account was set up with. There is a “forgot password” link on that screen; if the email address on the account is one nobody can open any more, write to us below from an address at the same publication and say so.

Write to us. Being exact about why, rather than sending you round the admin looking: there is no self-serve billing screen in Laurel today. Invoices, plan changes, a card that needs updating and anything about what you were charged are all handled by a person here. Tell us the publication and what you need and we will come back to you.

We pass it on rather than answer it. Your contest is yours — the categories, the rules, the eligibility and the results are your decisions and we will not overrule them or make them on your behalf. What we do answer directly is anything about the software: a ballot that will not load, an email that did not send, a payment that did not go through.