Each year our Awards tasks nominees to go out into their community and gather as many votes as possible. While it may appear this process favours nominees in larger communities, this isn’t the case thanks to our vote normalization process.
What is Vote Normalization?
In simple terms, businesses in smaller communities will need to gather fewer votes than businesses in larger communities to compete. Several factors are used to weigh votes, including the population of the community the business is based in (British Columbia Regional District Population Figures). This process creates a fair environment for all nominees and an equal chance for each to make our Top 5.
Our normalization process is handled by Small Business BC’s Market Research Analyst, Mark Eversfield. Mark explains his methodology below.
“Small Business BC’s mandate is to the entire province of BC and therefore recognizes the importance of small businesses throughout the province. Since the Small Business BC Awards are based on getting people to vote for a nominee’s business, where the nominee’s business is located can be an advantage or disadvantage,” Mark explained.
“If it’s located in a large city, it’s logical that a business can accumulate many votes. Conversely, a business in a small town will be at a competitive disadvantage where there are fewer votes available. To give businesses in smaller BC cities an even chance, we normalize the number of votes recorded. The process works by weighting their votes by their Regional District’s population of 15 years of age and older. There are 29 Regional Districts in BC.
“This way a smaller town’s business’s votes will have greater weight, vote for vote, than a business in a larger city where it is easier to get votes.”
Please Note: Only one vote per person is allowed, per nominee, per category. However, you can vote for your favourite business in every category they’re nominated in, or vote for as many different businesses as you like.