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This newspaper is always proud to be involved in anything community-oriented in Troup County, but we admit we’re pretty prideful about our annual Best of the Best promotion.

Every year, we take ballots from readers on who the best in numerous categories are in our community. Want the best barbecue? Our readers vote on that. Want to know who has the best pizza? The community decides. Have an opinion on who the best place to buy a car? You can vote on that too.

It’s a way to truly recognize the people and businesses who go above and beyond — whether that’s due to the high quality of their product, their customer-focused approach or any other characteristics that might separate them.

We changed it up a bit this year, making it easier than ever to vote. Instead of paper ballots mixed with an online option, this year everything is digital. We had a nomination round, where community members could write in businesses that they felt should make it to a voting round.

The community has come out in droves to vote, meaning the winners should be extremely proud when the winners are announced next month. As of this writing, more than 57,000 votes have been cast in the Best of Troup County contest.

We know that many businesses promote this honor, and we certainly encourage them to do so. These votes are cast only by community members, meaning it’s a true community honor. The internet is a place where businesses usually only hear negative complaints, but it’s clear there’s a lot of passion in this community to support local businesses and people when they’ve done a good job.

If you haven’t voted, you’re running out of time. Sunday is the final day to vote, so please take advantage of the opportunity while you can. Several categories are extremely close, meaning the difference in first and runner-up are slim.  To vote, visit https://www.lagrangenews.com/contests/best-of-troup-county/.

We’re thankful to the community for its support as we oversee this contest.

We look forward to announcing the winners next month.