Best of Havasu 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in Best of Havasu and why it matters

Best of Havasu gives Lake Havasu City readers a yearly say in which local businesses deserve the title of best in their field. River City Newspapers, publisher of havasunews.com, organizes the vote for the paper's coverage area, which takes in Lake Havasu City and the Lower Colorado River region of Arizona. Second Street hosts the ballot at havasunews.secondstreetapp.com, the contest platform many regional newspapers use for promotions of this kind.

For a local business, the value is straightforward. Finishing on a readers' choice ballot amounts to a recommendation from customers rather than from the publisher, and winners use the result in their own marketing for the following year. Since the voters are the newspaper's readers, the businesses that finish on top tend to be those with a genuine local customer base rather than a wide online following.

The 2026 promotion combines nominating and voting on a single form, so supporters name businesses and back finalists during the same visit rather than across two separate rounds. That one-visit shape matters for anyone planning outreach: a supporter can complete everything in a single sitting, which lowers the barrier compared with programs that split nomination and voting into separate windows.

Editions, windows and what the listing leaves out

The confirmed run covers four editions, in 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Every edition has its own page on the havasunews.secondstreetapp.com domain: the 2023 ballot sits at the Best-of-Havasu-2023-2 address, the 2024 edition at BestOf2024, and the 2025 edition at Best-of-Havasu-2025. That four-year run makes the program annual, and the next expected edition is the 2027 ballot.

For the current cycle the dated facts are the window's endpoints: voting opened on June 15, 2026 and ended on August 1, 2026, which means the 2026 edition has finished. Each earlier edition kept its own dates, and the promotion listing for the domain places the 2026 ballot next to the publisher's other contests, among them sweepstakes and a separate Best of the Burg vote.

Two facts are absent from the listing: the roster of categories, and the rules that govern voting. No category roster appears with the 2026 promotion, and no cap on repeat voting, daily return rule or eligibility text accompanies it either, so a business planning a campaign around specific categories or vote frequency has to read the ballot itself once it opens.

Gaps of this kind are common on Second Street promotions, where rules tend to live behind the ballot's entry screens rather than on the listing a search engine sees. The practical effect is that a business cannot tell from the outside which categories it fits, or how frequently a single supporter may vote, until the ballot is open and visible.

How a supporter votes on the Best of Havasu ballot

Supporters vote on the Second Street page belonging to the live edition. A supporter opens the ballot address, in 2026 the Best-of-Havasu-2026 page, and works through the categories the ballot presents. Because nominating and voting share one form, a single visit lets a supporter either write in a business that is missing or cast a vote for one already listed.

Second Street promotions usually require an email registration before they accept votes, and the ballot's own screens walk a supporter through that step. The exact registration and frequency settings River City Newspapers applies to Best of Havasu are absent from the listing, so the prompts shown on the ballot itself are the authority on how the mechanics work in practice.

For a business rallying its customers, the practical advice follows from that shape. Give people the exact ballot address rather than a search term, because earlier editions keep their own addresses on the domain and a supporter who lands on a closed 2025 or 2024 page cannot vote. Ask supporters to complete the categories that matter to the business in one sitting, and remind them before the window closes rather than after.

Since the 2026 window ended on August 1, none of this can be acted on until the next edition opens. No dates have been announced for the 2027 ballot yet, so the working assumption is that the program returns in its usual shape, with the details published when the next ballot goes up.

How Best of Havasu sits beside other Arizona ballots

Best of Havasu is one of several readers' choice programs in Arizona, but it answers to River City Newspapers alone and serves its own market. The ballot is built for Lake Havasu City, while other Arizona ballots on this site belong to separate organizers: Arizona Daily Star Readers' Choice belongs to the Tucson paper, and the CommunityVotes programs cover their own cities separately.

The closest neighbours in shape are the CommunityVotes city ballots, such as CommunityVotes Chandler, CommunityVotes Tempe, CommunityVotes Gilbert and CommunityVotes Buckeye. Those are best-of ballots too, but they run under the CommunityVotes structure rather than under a local newspaper, and none of them shares River City Newspapers' Second Street host.

Within the publisher's own portfolio, Best of Havasu is not the only ballot. The same Second Street host carries Best of the Burg, a separate readers' choice vote, along with sweepstakes and a teacher of the year ballot. A vote cast on one of those promotions counts only there; support earned for Best of Havasu does not transfer to the publisher's other contests.

What makes Best of Havasu distinct, then, is the combination of a newspaper publisher, a single-city market on the Colorado River, and a four-year annual run from 2023 through 2026. A business choosing where to put its outreach effort should treat each ballot separately, and Courier Cares Christmas Lighting Contest shows how different a same-state ballot can be in subject and season.

Strengthening support in Best of Havasu without risking the entry

Support in Best of Havasu comes from getting Lake Havasu City customers to the ballot and through it. The single-form format helps here: one visit is enough, so a business can ask a customer to nominate and vote in the same conversation instead of chasing a second visit weeks later. Handing out the exact ballot address, on receipts, signs or email signatures, removes the guesswork that loses votes.

River City Newspapers has not published its stance on outside help alongside the listing, which is a reason for caution rather than a loophole. Newspaper ballots of this kind usually reserve the right to remove votes that look irregular, and a nominee who campaigns aggressively without a published rule to lean on takes that risk onto itself. Studying the terms shown on the ballot before spending anything is the minimum.

If a business is weighing purchased support, our award votes page explains how that market works in general, and the honest framing is the organizer's: the rules on the ballot decide what counts, and no outside help overrides them. Outreach that asks real customers, and asks them again more than once during the window, is the approach that never conflicts with the ballot's terms.