2026 Prescott Readers' Choice: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the 2026 Prescott Readers' Choice is and who runs it

The 2026 Prescott Readers' Choice is a best-of ballot for the Prescott, Arizona market, run by the Prescott Daily Courier, the city's local newspaper. It belongs to the business recognition vertical: readers vote for local businesses they want to see honored, rather than entering something themselves. The ballot is built and hosted on Second Street, a promotion platform that media publishers across the country use for readers choice and best-of programs, and it sits at the paper's Second Street hub, dcourier.secondstreetapp.com.

The organizer backs the promotion with its own web presence at dailycourierchoice.com, where an about page and an FAQ carry the program's voting rules in the organizer's own words. That is where the paper describes the ballot's breadth, local businesses across a wide category roster, and the daily participation rule described further down this page.

Key facts

Because the promotion is run by a newspaper rather than a chamber of commerce or an events company, its identity is tied to the paper's readership. The Courier treats it as a service to its audience and a recognition program for the businesses those readers use, which shapes how the ballot is presented and how winners are framed.

The dated record: editions, windows and what is published

The platform carries two confirmed editions of this promotion. The 2026 edition accepted votes from March 2 through May 23, 2026 and is now closed, and a 2025 edition sits at its own year-labeled address on the same dcourier.secondstreetapp.com account. The organizer's own about page for the promotion traces the format back to 2023, which means the two platform editions are the ones with confirmed, dated windows while the program itself has a longer stated history.

The shape of the window is worth noting for planning purposes. The 2026 ballot ran for the better part of three months, opening in early March and closing in late May, which gives supporters a long stretch to work with rather than a sprint. Whether future editions keep that spring placement is decided by the organizer, not by the platform.

On the rules side, the organizer has published the two facts a supporter needs most: the ballot covers local businesses across a wide category roster, and voters may cast one vote per day, per category. What the organizer has not printed alongside those rules is an eligibility standard for who may participate; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

For anything else that changes between editions, the category roster, the exact open and close dates, the treatment of ties, the live ballot for the running year is the only authoritative version, and the Courier's own announcement of each new edition is the signal that a fresh window has opened.

How a supporter votes on this ballot today

The mechanic is a classic Second Street readers choice flow. A supporter reaches the ballot through the paper's Second Street hub, works through the category list, picks the business they want to recognize in a given category, and submits. No account purchase or entry fee is part of the published structure; the ballot is free public voting for the Courier's readers.

The rule that defines participation is the daily return. The organizer's about page states it plainly: you may vote once per day, per category. Two things follow from that. A supporter can come back every day the ballot is open and vote again for the same business in the same category, and a supporter can also vote in multiple different categories on the same visit. Both count as legitimate use under the stated rule, which is why the length of the window matters so much for any business hoping to accumulate support.

Practically, that turns the campaign into a calendar exercise. A business with a three-month window gains far more from a hundred supporters who each return daily than from a single-day push, because each day resets the allowance. The closed status of the 2026 ballot means there is nothing to vote on right now; the steps above describe what the form looks like when a window is live, and the next edition's form is expected to behave the same way on the same platform.

How this ballot sits beside its Arizona neighbours

The Prescott Daily Courier runs more than one reader promotion on the same Second Street account. Alongside this ballot, the platform listing shows the Courier Cares Christmas Lighting Contest, a seasonal program from the same publisher, plus sweepstakes and photo promotions and a pair of best-of ballots for other Arizona markets, Best of Sedona Kudos and Best of Verde Valley. The paper's Second Street account is therefore a hub, and this Readers' Choice is its flagship spring ballot.

Wider afield, Arizona has several best-of programs covered on this site: Best of Havasu, CommunityVotes Buckeye, CommunityVotes Chandler, CommunityVotes Gilbert and CommunityVotes Tempe. Each of those answers to its own organizer and has its own rules, so nothing published about them transfers to this ballot.

What distinguishes the Prescott program within that company is the combination of a newspaper publisher, a Second Street ballot explicitly built as a nomination and voting form, a broad local business roster, and a stated once-per-day, per-category rule. That mix, a long spring window with daily repeat voting across many categories, is the profile a business should plan around, and it differs from shorter single-purpose ballots elsewhere in the state. The Courier Cares Christmas Lighting Contest is the closest cousin by publisher, but it celebrates holiday displays rather than local businesses.

Building support in this program within its rules

Because this ballot allows one vote per day, per category, and runs for months, the strongest legitimate play is a reminder rhythm rather than a one-time blast. Businesses that do well in programs like this one tell their customers about the ballot early, name the exact category they are asking to be recognized in, and then repeat the ask on a schedule: at the register, in email receipts, and on social channels, once a week at minimum and daily in the final stretch before the close date.

Stay inside the organizer's published rules. The stated limit is the daily per-category allowance, so supporters voting once a day are using the ballot exactly as designed. What the Courier says about automated voting tools or bulk entries is not spelled out in the material behind this page, and that silence argues for keeping every ask pointed at real, individual, daily participation.

Should outside help be under consideration, read our award votes page first so you understand the general mechanics before anything else. Whatever route you take, the deciding factor in this program is sustained daily turnout over a long window, and no approach changes that underlying arithmetic.