Best of Flagstaff (Best of Flag): How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of Flagstaff is, and who runs it

Best of Flagstaff, known on Arizona Daily Sun's own pages as Best of Flag, is a readers'-choice business ballot for Flagstaff, Arizona. The newspaper runs it directly at azdailysun.com, with no separate voting vendor named on the page.

The confirmed history now runs three editions deep: 2024, 2025 and 2026. Arizona Daily Sun's own call to action asks readers to submit their Top Picks for Best of Flag, then confirms a separate voting window later in the year.

The dated facts: three editions, one confirmed window

What stands out about Best of Flag next to many newspaper ballots is that Arizona Daily Sun confirms a specific stretch for voting rather than leaving the whole cycle open-ended. That window, October 1 to October 31, applies to the 2026 cycle, the program's third confirmed edition after 2024 and 2025.

Ahead of that window sits the Top Picks nomination call, the newspaper's own language for how a business gets onto the ballot in the first place. No specific opening or closing date for that earlier stage is printed alongside the October voting window.

Neither a full category roster nor a per-voter limit appears on Arizona Daily Sun's pages. The newspaper does name specific categories, Best Lunch and Best Northern Arizona Attraction among them, but nothing confirms those names are the complete set rather than a sample.

How a Flagstaff business enters, and how a supporter votes

Arizona Daily Sun's own language for getting onto the ballot is direct: readers are asked to submit their Top Picks for Best of Flag. That points to a straightforward entry form rather than a jury or editorial panel picking finalists ahead of time.

Once the October 1 voting window opens, that is where actual voting happens, on the same azdailysun.com pages that carried the Top Picks call earlier in the cycle. Nothing on the newspaper's pages says whether the ballot allows one vote per device, per day, or otherwise, and Best of Flag's own rules, not an assumption borrowed from another paper's contest, are what would settle it.

A supporter arriving mid-cycle should check which stage is actually live before doing anything: the same azdailysun.com address hosts both the Top Picks form and the October ballot.

Where Best of Flagstaff sits among Arizona's other "best of" ballots

Flagstaff is far from the only Arizona market running an annual readers'-choice contest, and Best of Flag's own newspaper backing sets it apart from several neighbors that use a shared national platform instead.

None of those six share Arizona Daily Sun's judging or publish results alongside Best of Flag's, so a strong Best of Flag nomination changes nothing about where the same business stands on Best of Havasu, Best of Sedona Kudos, or any of the other five. A Coconino County business chasing more than one of these ballots at once is really running separate campaigns under separate rules, even if the effort feels like one push.

Building support for a Best of Flag nomination

Because the mechanic here is a form, not a jury, the most direct way to build support is the one Arizona Daily Sun's own call to action implies: get real Flagstaff customers to submit the business as their Top Pick, then ask the same people again once the October voting window opens. The newspaper's pages don't say anything, for or against, about outside help or voting software for Best of Flag.

A repeat ask across the full thirty-one-day October window tends to matter more for a program this young than a single push near the deadline. Is buying votes legal lays out the general line between legitimate promotion and a risky shortcut, worth reading before spending budget chasing a third Best of Flag win.